I do not come to weep here where they fell.
I come to speak to you who are still living;
I address my words to you, and to myself.

 Others have died before. Remember?
Others like these, like you, with the same surnames

 In rainy Lonquimay, in San Gregorio,
in barren Ranquil, scored by the spendthrift wind,
in Iquique choked and half-buried by drifting sand,
along the edge of the sea and the edge of the desert,
following the smoke line and the rain line,
from the high pampas down to the archipelagos,
other men have been murdered,
others with names like Antonio, like your name,
fishermen, blacksmiths, people with jobs like yours:

 bone and breed of Chile: faces
scarred by wind-lash, gaunt
as the pampas, wearing
the signature of pain.

"The Heights of Macchu Picchu"

From air to air like an empty net
I went between the streets and the atmosphere,
through autumn's advent with its arrival
and departure of new-coined leaves,
between spring and the tasselled wheat
as if inside a falling glove,
where the greatest of loves gives us
what is like a long moonrise

 (I live radiant days amid the storm)
of bodies: steel converted
into silence of acid:
nights unravelled to their last dust-grain:
embattled strands of the nuptial fatherland.)

 Someone who waited for me among violins
uncovered a world like a buried tower
its spiral sunk beneath all
the hoarse sulphur-coloured leaves:
and deeper, in the geological gold,
like a sword swathed in meteors,
I plunged my tender turbulent hand
into the most genital of the earth.
I put my forehead in the waves
below,
Like a drop of water I slid into sulphuric peace,
and like one blind, I returned
to the jasmine of worn human springtime.

Here I love You
from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Here I love you
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other

 The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
sometimes a sail. High, high stars.

 Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Here I love you.

 Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.
The moon turns its clockwork dream.

 The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.