She Who Reads Pablo Neruda

We had been reading the 100 Love Sonnets of Pablo Neruda
“Love, what a long way, to arrive at a kiss,” bone stone
hip, hazel twig, “O love, o crazy sunbeam and purple premonition,”
“Whoever loved as we did,” “the lost horses of autumn.”

We had been reading the love songs of Pablo Neruda
on the way to the river where the water burns with light
and blue skies float among acres of white cloud, our
loves have arrived late, but in time to catch fire

Neruda sings “the habitual slowness of natural things,”
aching windows and carnations, he sings of scorched
rock, a “metallic homeland lifted on towers of snow,”

We sat on a driftwood log while the sun warmed her hair
till it burned my lips, “Little queen of my bones...your shadow
the fragrance of plums” we have arrived in each other, we are here.

Pablo Neruda, Trans. Stephen Tapscott. 100 Love Sonnets/ Cien sonetos de amor. University of Texas Press, 1959 and 1986.