the flame is your dominion

Eleven years, and very slowly working my way through Neruda, one love sonnet at a time. I mean, there are a hundred of them, and in eleven years I've only posted two, so I may be here for a while. I fucking adore One Hundred Love Sonnets—in my opinion, they are some of the sexiest and most romantic poems every written.

Cuántas veces, amor, te amé sin verte y tal vez sin recuerdo,
sin reconocer tu miranda, sin mirarte, centaura,
en regiones contrarias, en un mediodía quemante:
eras sólo el aroma de los cereales que amo.

Tal vez te vi, te supuse al pasar levantando una copa
en Angol, a la luz de la luna de junio,
o eras tú la cintura de aquella guitarra
que toqué en las tinieblas y sonó como el mar desmedido.

Te amé sin que yo lo supiera, y busqué tu memoria.
En las casas vacías entré con linterna a robar tu retrato.
Pero yo ya sabía cómo eras. De pronto

mientras ibas conmigo te toqué y se detuvo mi vida:
frente a mis ojos estabas, reinándome, y reinas.
Como hoguera en los bosques el fuego es tu reino.


Love, how often I loved you without seeing—without remembering you—
not recognizing your glance, not knowing you, a gentian
in the wrong place, scorching in the hot noon,
but I loved only the smell of wheat.

Or maybe I saw you, imagined you lifting a wineglass
in Angol, by the light of the summer’s moon;
or were you the waist of that guitar I strummed
in the shadows, the one that rang like an impetuous sea?

I loved you without knowing I did; I searched to remember you.
I broke into houses to steal your likeness,
though I already knew what you were like. And, suddenly,

when you were there with me I touched you, and my life
stopped: you stood before me, you took dominion like a queen:
like a wildfire in the forest, and the flame is your dominion.

—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), XXII from Cien sonetos de amor or One Hundred Love Sonnets, 1959, translated by Stephen Tapscott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).