Great Throughts Treasury

"Of all fires, love is the only inexhaustible one."

"Of everything I have seen, it's you I want to go on seeing: of everything I've touched, it's your flesh I want to go on touching. I love your orange laughter. I am moved by the sight of you sleeping. What am I to do, love, loved one? I don't know how others love or how people loved in the past. I live, watching you, loving you. Being in love is my nature."

"Oh each successive night that comes has something in it of an abandoned ember that is slowly burning out, and it falls swathed in ruins, surrounded by funereal objects."

"Oh Earth, Wait for Me Return to me, oh sun, to my wild destiny, rain of the ancient wood, bring me back the flavor and the swords That fall from the sky, the solitary peace of pasture and rock, the damp at the river-margins, the smell of the larch tree, the wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded restlessness of the towering araucaria. Earth, give me back your mashed gifts, the towers of silence which rose from the solemnity of their roots. I want to go back to being what I have not Been, and learn to go back from deeps such that among all natural things I could live or not live; it does not matter to be one stone more, the dark stone, the pure stone which the river bears away."

"Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you. There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle."

"Oh love, rose made wet by mermaids and foams, fire that dances and climbs up the invisible stairs and awakens the blood in the tunnel of sleeplessness."

"On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity."

"Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands."

"Oh, love is a journey with water and with stars, with drowning air and brusque storms of flour: loving is a battle of lightning, and two bodies defeated by a single honey."

"Our love was born outside the walls, in the wind, in the night, in the earth, and that's why the clay and the flower, the mud and the roots know your name."

"Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything, without anguish, death, winter waiting along it with their eyes open through the dew."

"On either side of the trail I could observe in the wild desolation something which betrayed human activity. There were piled up branches which had lasted out many winters, offerings made by hundreds who had journeyed there, crude burial mounds in memory of the fallen, so that the passer should think of those who had not been able to struggle on but had remained there under the snow forever. My comrades, too, hacked off with their machetes branches which brushed our heads and bent down over us from the colossal trees, from oaks whose last leaves were scattering before the winter storms. And I too left a tribute at every mound, a visiting card of wood, a branch from the forest to deck one or other of the graves of these unknown travelers."

"Our love is a harsh cord that binds us wounding us and if we want to leave our wound, to separate, it makes a new knot for us and condemns us to drain our blood and burn together."

"One pillar holding up consolations and don?t bother telling me anything and so? The pale metalloid heals you? I have a terrible fear of being an animal. And what if after so many words, the anger that breaks a man down into boys."

"Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind. In this way the song will not have been sung in vain."

"Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread."

"Perhaps not to be is to be without your being, without your going, that cuts noon light like a blue flower, without your passing later through fog and stones, without the torch you lift in your hand that others may not see as golden, that perhaps no one believed blossomed the glowing origin of the rose, without, in the end, your being, your coming suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life, blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze: and it follows that I am, because you are: it follows from ?you are?, that I am, and we: and, because of love, you will, I will, We will, come to be."

"Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread."

"Rejected falling, without stubbornly."

"Over your breasts of motionless current, over your legs of firmness and water, over the permanence and the pride of your naked hair I want to be, my love, now that the tears are thrown into the raucous baskets where they accumulate, I want to be, my love, alone with a syllable of mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow."

"Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time, the pace of history. But what would have become of me if, for example, I had contributed in some way to the maintenance of the feudal past of the great American continent? How should I then have been able to raise my brow, illuminated by the honor which Sweden has conferred on me, if I had not been able to feel some pride in having taken part, even to a small extent, in the change which has now come over my country? It is necessary to look at the map of America, to place oneself before its splendid multiplicity, before the cosmic generosity of the wide places which surround us, in order to understand why many writers refuse to share the dishonor and plundering of the past, of all that which dark gods have taken away from the American peoples."

"Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!"

"Sadness, scarab with seven crippled feet, spider-web egg, scramble-brained rat, bitch's skeleton: No entry here. Don't come in. Go away. Go back south with your umbrella, go back north with your serpent's teeth. A poet lives here. No sadness may cross this threshold. Through these windows comes the breath of the world, fresh red roses, flags embroidered with the victories of the people. No. No entry. Flap your bat's wings, I will trample the feathers that fall from your mantle, I will sweep the bits and pieces of your carcass to the four corners of the wind, I will wring your neck, I will stitch your eyelids shut, I will sew your shroud, sadness, and bury your rodent bones beneath the springtime of an apple tree"

"Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us leaving us dead, killing us along with the killers but the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who will erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?"

"Remembering her, it is as if my heart were buried in the rain. Again I think it?s she, but why would she be coming now? Oh, what sad days! ? Your eyes : two sleepy cups darkened by purple berries from the forest undergrowth. What a leaf, a leaf from a white vine, fragrant and heavy, I could have brought you from the forest. Every- thing flees from this solitude enforced by rain and contemplation."

"Returned me, oh sun, to my wild destiny, rain of the ancient wood, bringing me back to the aroma of swords that fall from the sky, the solitary peace of pasture and rock, the damp at the river-margins, the smell of the larch tree, the wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded restlessness of the towering araucaria. Earth, give me back your pure gifts, the towers of silence which rose from the solemnity of their roots. I want to go back to being what I have not been, and learn to go back from such deeps that amongst all natural things I could live or not live; it does not matter to be one stone more, the dark stone, the pure stone which the river bears away."

"Shyness is an alien heart condition, a category, a dimension that leads to loneliness."

"She did not speak for speech was unknown to her."

"So I wait for you like a lonely house till you will see me again and live in me. Till then my windows ache."

"So I love you because I know no other way 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."

"So close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep."

"So many days, oh so many days seeing you so tangible and so close, how do I pay, with what do I pay? The bloodthirsty spring has awakened in the woods. The foxes start from their earths, the serpents drink the dew, and I go with you in the leaves between the pines and the silence, asking myself how and when I will have to pay for my luck. Of everything I have seen, it's you I want to go on seeing: of everything I've touched, it's your flesh I want to go on touching. I love your orange laughter. I am moved by the sight of you sleeping. What am I to do, love, loved one? I don't know how others love or how people loved in the past. I live, watching you, loving you. Being in love is my nature. You please me more each afternoon. Where is she? I keep on asking if your eyes disappear. How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt. I feel poor, foolish and sad, and you arrive and you are lightning glancing off the peach trees. That's why I love you and yet not why. There are so many reasons, and yet so few, for love has to be so, involving and general, particular and terrifying, joyful and grieving, flowering like the stars, and measureless as a kiss. That's why I love you and yet not why. There are so many reasons, and yet so few, for love has to be so, involving and general, particular and terrifying, joyful and grieving, flowering like the stars, and measureless as a kiss."

"So that you will hear me my words sometimes grow thin as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches. Necklace, drunken bell for your hands smooth as grapes. And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy. It climbs the same way on damp walls. You are to blame for this cruel sport. They are fleeing from my dark lair. You fill everything, you fill everything. Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy, and they are more used to my sadness than you are. Now I want them to say what I want to say to you to make you hear as I want you to hear me. The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual. Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over. You listen to other voices in my painful voice .Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications. Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me. Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish. But my words become stained with your love. You occupy everything, you occupy everything. I am making them into an endless necklace for your white hands, smooth as grapes."

"So the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb."

"Sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin in my hand."

"Someday anywhere, unfailingly anywhere you find yourself, and that, only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life."

"Sometimes I get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet."

"Suddenly I cannot tell you what I must tell you, man, forgive me; know that although not listen to my words I started to mourn or not to sleep and I no see you for the last time until the end. Suddenly I cannot just tell you what I Should be telling you, friend, forgive me; you know that although you do not hear my words, I was not asleep or in tears that I am with you without seeing you for a good long time and until the end."

"Start dying slowly if you do not visit not read the book if you do not listen to the sounds of life if you do not appreciate yourself start dying slowly When you kill in self-esteem when they do not let others help you start dying slowly. If you're a slave of your habits a repetitive way to go if you do not change your routines if you do not wear different colors or if you do not speak to those you start dying slowly if the fervor of feeling rebellious and things that shine in your eyes and your heart beats faster, they shun you start dying slowly if when your job or your love do not change it unless you know for sure you do not risk the uncertain, if not go after your dreams beyond the do not allow yourself , At least once in your life expedient to go beyond your life today Start today threaten me now what thou"

"Sometimes we followed a very faint trail, perhaps left by smugglers or ordinary criminals in flight, and we did not know whether many of them had perished, surprised by the icy hands of winter, by the fearful snowstorms which suddenly rage in the Andes and engulf the traveler, burying him under a whiteness seven stories high."

"Suffer the always expected more. Let him who never expected anyone?"

"Take away the bread, if you like, take my air, but do not take away your smile."

"Take bread away from me, if you wish, take, my air away, but do not take from me your laughter. Do not take away the rose, the lance flower that you pluck, the water that suddenly bursts forth in joy, the sudden wave of silver born in you. My struggle is harsh and I come back with eyes tired at times from having seen the unchanging earth, but when your laughter enters it rises to the sky seeking me and it opens for me all the doors of life. My love, in the darkest hour your laughter opens, and if suddenly you see my blood staining the stones of the street, laugh, because your laughter will be for my hands like a fresh sword. Next to the sea in the autumn, your laughter must raise its foamy cascade, and in the spring, love, I want your laughter like the flower I was waiting for, the blue flower, the rose of my echoing country. Laugh at the night, at the day, at the moon, laugh at the twisted streets of the island, laugh at this clumsy fool who loves you, but when I open my eyes and close them, when my steps go, when my steps return, deny me bread, air, light, spring, but never your laughter."

"Tell me, is the rose naked or is that her only dress? Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots? Who hears the regrets of the thieving automobile? Is there anything in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?"

"The birds of night peck at the first stars that flash like my soul when I love you."

"That time was like never and always: where we expect nothing and find everything waiting."

"The final poem sad tonight I want to write the lines I write for example: The night is shattered and its pieces are stars in the distance and the wind go night - the wind wraps the sky and sings I most sad tonight. write the rows of his love, and sometimes I've been in love with her ??at night so my arms and kissed her very much under the endless sky, my love, and sometimes I fall in love How could love big eyes off of her I am sad tonight I want to write the lines that I do not understand his feeling that his missing 've heard this long night, which no longer he sits on the spirit of these rows, like dew on the grass , what It is important, that I could not keep the night is shattered and she is not with me the whole story. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance, his absence could not take my soul, as if struggling to find my two plays her heart: not night looks like the same horn Saran morning my time, not like we definitely love Not now, but how I long to reach him, maybe the wind has struggled to find someone to kiss on the lips because I kiss his voice, his marble body, infinite eyes, certainly, but perhaps now I am not in love. Love is short, forgetting what his long nights of her, I no longer hold that his soul could not lack , however, is the ultimate punishment that makes me suffer and these the last lines that I write for"

"The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty."

"The charter for the great thief, prison for stealing a loaf."

"The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees that burned with sweetness or maddened the sting: the struggle continues, the journeys go and come between honey and pain. No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net. They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river. Sleep doesn't divide life into halves, or action, or silence, or honor: life is like a stone, a single motion, a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves, an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal that climbs or descends burning in your bones."