If your eyes were not the color of the moon,
of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,
if you were not an amber week,

not the yellow moment
when autumn climbs up through the vines;
if you were not that bread the fragrant moon
kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky,

oh, my dearest, I could not love you so!
But when I hold you I hold everything that is –
sand, time, the tree of the rain,

everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all:
in your life I see everything that lives.

– Sonnet VIII by Pablo Neruda

Related posts:

1. Poem of the day – Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never bloomsbut carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;thanks to [...]...
2. Poem of the day – Sonnet XXV by Pablo Neruda Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own: I wavered through the streets, amongobjects: nothing mattered or had a name: the world was made of air, which waited. I knew rooms full of ashes, tunnels where the moon lived, rough warehouses that growled ‘get lost’, questions that insisted in the sand. Everything was empty, [...]...
3. Poem of the day – Sonnet LXXXI by Pablo Neruda And now you’re mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.Love and pain and work should all sleep, now.The night turns on its invisible wheels,and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,we will go together, over the waters of time.No one [...]...
4. Poem of the day – I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You by Pablo Neruda I do not love you except because I love you;I go from loving to not loving you,From waiting to not waiting for youMy heart moves from cold to fire. I love you only because it’s you the one I love;I hate you deeply, and hating youBend to you, and the measure of my changing love [...]...
5. Poem of the day – Your Laughter by Pablo Neruda Take bread away from me, if you wish,take air away, butdo not take from me your laughter. Do not take away the rose,the lance flower that you pluck,the water that suddenlybursts forth in joy,the sudden waveof silver born in you. My struggle is harsh and I come backwith eyes tiredat times from having seenthe unchanging [...]...