Great Throughts Treasury

"Do not love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secret, between the shadow and the soul I love you as the plant that does not bloom and carries within self, hidden, the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. 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 how to love differently, but so that I am not nor are you, so close that your hand on my suspicion is mine, so close you close your eyes with my dream."

"Do you have more than one always hopes that he never expected anyone?."

"Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes?"

"Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart."

"Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -- because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep. Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then the little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift into me, choking my lost heart. Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach; may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance. Don't leave me for a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll have gone so far I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking, Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?"

"Don't you know there is no one in the streets and no one in the houses? There are only eyes in the windows. If you don't have a place to sleep, knock on a door and it will open, open up to a certain point and you will see that it is cold inside, and that that house is empty and wants nothing to do with you, your stories mean nothing, and if you insist on being gentle, the dog and the cat will bite you."

"Down there on those vast expanses in my native country, where I was taken by events which have already fallen into oblivion, one has to cross, and I was compelled to cross, the Andes to find the frontier of my country with Argentina. Great forests make these inaccessible areas like a tunnel through which our journey was secret and forbidden, with only the faintest signs to show us the way. There were no tracks and no paths, and I and my four companions, riding on horseback, pressed forward on our tortuous way, avoiding the obstacles set by huge trees, impassable rivers, immense cliffs and desolate expanses of snow, blindly seeking the quarter in which my own liberty lay. Those who were with me knew how to make their way forward between the dense leaves of the forest, but to feel safer they marked their route by slashing with their machetes here and there in the bark of the great trees, leaving tracks which they would follow back when they had left me alone with my destiny."

"During this long journey I found the necessary components for the making of the poem. There I received contributions from the earth and from the soul. And I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners? solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained - man and his shadow, man and his conduct, man and his poetry - by an ever-wider sense of community, by an effort which will forever bring together the reality and the dreams in us because it is precisely in this way that poetry unites and mingles them. And therefore I say that I do not know, after so many years, whether the lessons I learned when I crossed a daunting river, when I danced around the skull of an ox, when I bathed my body in the cleansing water from the topmost heights - I do not know whether these lessons welled forth from me in order to be imparted to many others or whether it was all a message which was sent to me by others as a demand or an accusation. I do not know whether I experienced this or created it, I do not know whether it was truth or poetry, something passing or permanent, the poems I experienced in this hour, the experiences which I later put into verse."

"Each hour, each day."

"Drunk as drunk on turpentine from your open kisses, your wet body wedged between my wet body and the strake of our boat that is made of flowers, feasted, we guide it - our fingers like tallows adorned with yellow metal - over the sky's hot rim, the day's last breath in our sails. Pinned by the sun between solstice and equinox, drowsy and tangled together we drifted for months and woke with the bitter taste of land on our lips, eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime and the sound of a rope lowering a bucket down its well. Then, we came by night to the Fortunate Isles, and lay like fish under the net of our kisses."

"Each in the most hidden sack kept the lost jewels of memory, intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses, the fragment of public or private happiness. A few, the wolves, collected thighs, other men loved the dawn scratching mountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers. For me happiness was to share singing, praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes. I ask forgiveness for my bad ways: my life had no use on earth."

"Every day you play with the light of the universe."

"Everything is so alive, that I can be alive. Without moving I can see it all. In your life I see everything that lives."

"Each of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green and white silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid down over centuries, among half-fallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as fresh obstacles to bar our progress. We were in a dazzling and secret world of nature which at the same time was a growing menace of cold, snow and persecution. Everything became one: the solitude, the danger, the silence, and the urgency of my mission."

"Every day, hands are creating the world."

"Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks - All those men were there inside, when she came in totally naked. They had been drinking: they began to spit. Newly come from the river, she knew nothing. She was a mermaid who had lost her way. The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh. Obscenities drowned her golden breasts. Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears. Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes. They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs, and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor. She did not speak because she had no speech. Her eyes were the colour of distant love, her twin arms were made of white topaz. Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light, and suddenly she went out by that door. Entering the river she was cleaned, shining like a white stone in the rain, and without looking back she swam again swam towards emptiness, swam towards death."

"For my heart just your chest, your freedom enough for my wings."

"For human beings, not to speak is to die."

"Fear envelops bones like new skin, envelops blood with night?s skin, the earth moves beneath the soles of the feet - it is not your hair but the terror in your head, like long hair made of vertical nails, and what you see are not shattered streets, but rather, within you, your own crushed walls, your frustrated infinity, again the city comes crashing down: in your silence, only water?s threat is heard, and in the water drowned horses gallop through your death."

"For me only those solitudes, to myself that pure way, to myself the universe."

"For us nothing that separates us all one."

"From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny."

"From each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies."

"Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon, thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light, what obscure brilliance opens between your columns? What ancient night does a man touch with his senses? Loving is a journey with water and with stars, with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour: loving is a clash of lightning-bolts and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey."

"From your hips to your feet I want to do a long trip."

"Further on, just before we reached the frontier which was to divide me from my native land for many years, we came at night to the last pass between the mountains. Suddenly we saw the glow of a fire as a sure sign of a human presence, and when we came nearer we found some half-ruined buildings, poor hovels which seemed to have been abandoned. We went into one of them and saw the glow of fire from tree trunks burning in the middle of the floor, carcasses of huge trees, which burnt there day and night and from which came smoke that made its way up through the cracks in the roof and rose up like a deep-blue veil in the midst of the darkness. We saw mountains of stacked cheeses, which are made by the people in these high regions. Near the fire lay a number of men grouped like sacks. In the silence we could distinguish the notes of a guitar and words in a song which was born of the embers and the darkness, and which carried with it the first human voice we had encountered during our journey. It was a song of love and distance, a cry of love and longing for the distant spring, from the towns we were coming away from, for life in its limitless extent. These men did not know who we were, they knew nothing about our flight, they had never heard either my name or my poetry; or perhaps they did, perhaps they knew us? What actually happened was that at this fire we sang and we ate, and then in the darkness we went into some primitive rooms. Through them flowed a warm stream, volcanic water in which we bathed, warmth which welled out from the mountain chain and received us in its bosom."

"Give me silence, water, hope. Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes."

"Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that forms the fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweeds filled your body with joy, and your luminous eyes and your mouth that has the smile of the water. A black yearning sun is braided into the strands of your black mane, when you stretch your arms. You play with the sun as with a little brook and it leaves two dark pools in your eyes."

"Give me, for my life, all lives, give me all the pain of everyone, I'm going to turn it into hope. Give me all the joys, even the most secret, because otherwise how will these things be known? I have to tell them, give me the labors of everyday, for that's what I sing."

"Give me your hand out of the depths sown by your sorrows."

"Goodbye, goodbye, to one place or another, to every mouth, to every sorrow, to the insolent moon, to weeks which wound in the days and disappeared, goodbye to this voice and that one stained with amaranth, and goodbye to the usual bed and plate, to the twilit setting of all goodbyes, to the chair that is part of the same twilight, to the way made by my shoes. I spread myself, no question; I turned over whole lives, changed skin, lamps, and hates, it was something I had to do, not by law or whim, more of a chain reaction; each new journey enchained me; I took pleasure in places, in all places. And, newly arrived, I promptly said goodbye with still newborn tenderness as if the bread were to open and suddenly flee from the world of the table. So I left behind all languages, repeated goodbyes like an old door, changed cinemas, reasons, and tombs, left everywhere for somewhere else; I went on being, and being always half undone with joy, a bridegroom among sadnesses, never knowing how or when, ready to return, never returning. It?s well known that he who returns never left, so I traced and retraced my life, changing clothes and planets, growing used to the company, to the great whirl of exile, to the great solitude of bells tolling.-Goodbyes"

"Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly."

"Had not founded the land of my birth I started."

"Hate is like a swordfish, working through water invisibly and then you see it coming with blood along its blade, but transparency disarms it."

"Happily we splashed about, dug ourselves out, as it were, liberated ourselves from the weight of the long journey on horseback. We felt refreshed, reborn, baptized, when in the dawn we started on the journey of a few miles which was to eclipse me from my native land. We rode away on our horses singing, filled with a new air, with a force that cast us out on to the world's broad highway which awaited me. This I remember well, that when we sought to give the mountain dwellers a few coins in gratitude for their songs, for the food, for the warm water, for giving us lodging and beds, I would rather say for the unexpected heavenly refuge that had met us on our journey, our offering was rejected out of hand. They had been at our service, nothing more. In this taciturn "nothing" there were hidden things that were understood, perhaps a recognition, perhaps the same kind of dreams."

"He learned the alphabet of lightning."

"He or she who does not travel, who does not read, who does not listen to music, who does not find charm in itself. Dies slowly he who destroys his self-love, who do not even try. Dies slowly he who becomes the slave of habit, repeating every on the same trails, who does not change routine, not risk to wear a new color or not talk to strangers. Dies slowly he who avoids a passion And your swirling emotions, Those that glimmer in the eyes and hearts decayed. Dies slowly he who does not change his life when he is unsatisfied with your job or your love, Nothing ventured so uncertain it safe to go after a dream, who is not allowed at least once in life flee from sensible advice ... Live today! - Make Today! Do not be dying slowly! Do not forget to be happy!"

"He was born a man among many who were born, lived among many men who lived, and this is not history but earth."

"He who becomes the slave of habit, who follows the same routes every day, who never changes pace, who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly. He or she who shuns passion, who prefers black on white, dotting ones it?s rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer, that turn a yawn into a smile, that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly. He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy, who is unhappy at work, who does not risk certainty for uncertainty, to thus follow a dream, those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly. He who does not travel, who does not read, who does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself, she who does not find grace in herself, dies slowly. He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem, who does not allow himself to be helped, who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops, dies slowly. He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly. Let's try and avoid death in small doses, reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing. Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness."

"Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning."

"He stops when I hear, it sounds when I sleep."

"Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain. I love you still among these cold things. Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels that cross the sea towards no arrival. I see myself forgotten like those old anchors. The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there. My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose. I love what I do not have. You are so far. My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights. But night comes and starts to sing to me."

"Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude."

"Hide me in your arms just for this night, as the rain breaks against sea and earth its innumerable mouth."

"How do the oranges divide up sunlight in the orange tree?"

"How did the abandoned bicycle win its freedom?"

"I am a prisoner with the door open, with the open world."

"How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans."

"How many times, love, loved you without seeing you and perhaps without memory, without acknowledging your look, without looking, centaury, in regions contrary in a scorching midday: you were just the flavor of the cereal I love. Maybe I saw you, I figured to spend raising a glass in Angol, in the light of the moon, June, or were you the waist of that guitar I played in the darkness and it sounded like the excessive sea. I loved without me knowing, and I sought your memory. Walked in empty houses to steal your flashlight portrait. But I knew what it was. Suddenly while you were with me I touched you and my life stopped: Before my eyes were, you kings and queens . As bonfire in forest fire is your kingdom."

"I am a book of snow, a spacious hand, an open meadow, a circle that waits. I belong to the earth and its winter."