Ode to the Book
When I close a book
I open life.
I hear
faltering cries
among harbours.
Copper ignots
slide down sand-pits
to Tocopilla.
Night time.
Among the islands
our ocean
throbs with fish,
touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalk ribs
of my country.
The whole of night
clings to its shores, by dawn
it wakes up singing
as if it had excited a guitar.

The ocean's surge is calling.
The wind
calls me
and Rodriguez calls,
and Jose Antonio--
I got a telegram
from the "Mine" Union
and the one I love
(whose name I won't let out)
expects me in Bucalemu.

No book has been able
to wrap me in paper,
to fill me up
with typography,
with heavenly imprints
or was ever able
to bind my eyes,
I come out of books to people orchards
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work the burning metals
or to eat smoked beef
by mountain firesides.
I love adventurous
books,
books of forest or snow,
depth or sky
but hate
the spider book 
in which thought
has laid poisonous wires
to trap the juvenile
and circling fly.
Book, let me go.
I won't go clothed
in volumes,
I don't come out
of collected works,
my poems
have not eaten poems--
they devour
exciting happenings,
feed on rough weather,
and dig their food
out of earth and men.
I'm on my way
with dust in my shoes
free of mythology:
send books back to their shelves,
I'm going down into the streets.
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song. 
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Love Sonnet XVII
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 blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you with 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 as I fall asleep.
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Saddest Poem 
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. 
Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars, 
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." 
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. 
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. 
On nights like this, I held her in my arms. 
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. 

She loved me, sometimes I loved her. 
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. 
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. 

To hear the immense night, more immense without her. 
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. 

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her. 
The night is full of stars and she is not with me. 

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away. 
My soul is lost without her. 

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her. 
My heart searches for her and she is not with me. 

The same night that whitens the same trees. 
We, we who were, we are the same no longer. 

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her. 
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. 

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once 
belonged to my kisses. 
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes. 

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her. 
Love is so short and oblivion so long. 

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms, 
my soul is lost without her. 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me, 
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
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Poetry 
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived 
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where 
it came from, from winter or a river. 
I don't know how or when, 
no, they were not voices, they were not 
words, nor silence, 
but from a street I was summoned, 
from the branches of night, 
abruptly from the others, 
among violent fires 
or returning alone, 
there I was without a face 
and it touched me. 

I did not know what to say, my mouth 
had no way 
with names 
my eyes were blind, 
and something started in my soul, 
fever or forgotten wings, 
and I made my own way, 
deciphering 
that fire 
and I wrote the first faint line, 
faint, without substance, pure 
nonsense, 
pure wisdom 
of someone who knows nothing, 
and suddenly I saw 
the heavens 
unfastened 
and open, 
planets, 
palpitating planations, 
shadow perforated, 
riddled 
with arrows, fire and flowers, 
the winding night, the universe. 

And I, infinitesmal being, 
drunk with the great starry 
void, 
likeness, image of 
mystery, 
I felt myself a pure part 
of the abyss, 
I wheeled with the stars, 
my heart broke free on the open sky.
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We Are Many
Of the many men who I am, who we are,
I can't find a single one;
they disappear among my clothes,
they've left for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as intelligent,
the fool I always keep hidden
takes over all that I say.

At other times, I'm asleep
among distinguished people,
and when I look for my brave self,
a coward unknown to me
rushes to cover my skeleton
with a thousand fine excuses.

When a decent house catches fire,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and that's me. What can I do?
What can I do to distinguish myself?
How can I pull myself together?

All the books I read
are full of dazzling heroes,
always sure of themselves.
I die with envy of them;
and in films full of wind and bullets,
I goggle at the cowboys,
I even admire the horses.

But when I call for a hero,
out comes my lazy old self;
so I never know who I am,
nor how many I am or will be.
I'd love to be able to touch a bell
and summon the real me,
because if I really need myself,
I mustn't disappear.

While I am writing, I'm far away;
and when I come back, I've gone.
I would like to know if others
go through the same things that I do,
have as many selves as I have,
and see themselves similarly;
and when I've exhausted this problem,
I'm going to study so hard
that when I explain myself,
I'll be talking geography.
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