from Cien Sonetos de Amor (100 Love Sonnets)
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XVII
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I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
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I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
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I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
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than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
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LXVI
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I do not love you - except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
from waiting to not waiting for you
my heart moves from the cold into
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the fire. I love you only because it's you
I love; I hate you no end, and hating you
bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
is that I do not see you but love you
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blindly. Maybe the January light will consume
my heart with its cruel
ray, stealing my key to true
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calm. In this part of the story I am the one who
dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.
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LXXIII
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Maybe you'll remember that razor-faced man
who slipped out from the dark like a blade
and - before we realized - knew what was there:
he saw the smoke and concluded fire.
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The pallid woman with black hair
rose like a fish from the abyss,
and the two of them built up a contraption,
armed to the teeth, against love.
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Man and woman, they felled mountains and gardens,
then went down to the river, they scaled the walls,
they hoisted their atrocious artillery up the hill.
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Then love knew it was called love.
And when I lifted my eyes to your name,
suddenly your heart showed me my way.
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from Veinte Poemas de Amor (20 Poems of Love)
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XX Tonight I Can Write...
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
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Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
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The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
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Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
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She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
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To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
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What does it matter than my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
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This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
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My sight searches for me as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
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The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
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I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
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Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
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I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
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Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
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Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
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