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L X X 1
Love crosses its islands from grief to grief,
It sets its roots, watered with tears,
And no one – no one – can escape the heart’s progress
As it runs, silent and carnivorous.

You and I searched for a wide valley, for another planet
Where the salt wouldn’t touch your hair,
Where sorrows couldn’t grow because of anything I did,
Where bread could live and not grow old.

A planet entwined with vistas and foliage,
A plain, a rock, hard and unoccupied:
We wanted to build a strong nest

With our own hands, without hurt or harm or speech,
But love was not like that: love was like a lunatic city
With crowds of people blanching on their porches

Neruda

L X X V
Here are the house, the sea, the flag.
We wander past other long fences.
We couldn’t find the gate, nor the sound
Of our absence – as if dead.

At last the house opened its silence,
We enter, step over abandoned stuff,
Dead rats, empty farewells,
The water that wept in the pipes.

It wept, the house – wept day and night;
It whimpered with the spiders, ajar,
It fell apart, with its darkened eyes –

And now, abruptly, we return it to life,
We settle in, and it does not recognise us:
It has to bloom and has forgotten how.

Neruda