Love

Love

Pablo Neruda

What's wrong with you, with us, 
what's happening to us? 
Ah 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. 

What's wrong with you? I look at you 
and I find nothing in you but two eyes 
like all eyes, a mouth 
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful, 
a body just like those that have slipped 
beneath my body without leaving any memory. 

And how empty you went through the world 
like a wheat-colored jar 
without air, without sound, without substance! 
I vainly sought in you 
depth for my arms 
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth: 
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes, 
nothing, 
beneath your double breast scarcely 
raised 
a current of crystalline order 
that does not know why it flows singing. 
Why, why, why, 
my love, why?