I do not love you..
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 things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms,
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.
Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride,
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 and I fall asleep.
-Pablo Neruda
I found that today, and I like it. Never got into much Neruda, I like Rilke, Thomas, Tennyson, and Elizabeth Browning. This poem resonates with me, probably because it's a man trying to express the unexpressable, love. The between the shadow and soul strikes me as a reference to T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men, another of my favorites.
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow..."
Would that I still had someone to love.