Sonnet XII

Full woman, flesh-apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, mud and light in masquerade,
what secret clarity opens through your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?

Oh, love is a journey with water and stars,
with drowning air and storms of flour;
love is a clash of lightnings,
two bodies subdued by one honey.

Kiss by kiss I travel your little infinity,
your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages;
and a genital fire--transformed, delicious--

slips through the narrow roadways of the blood
till it pours itself, quick, like a night carnation, till it is:
and is nothing, in shadow, and a flimmer of light.

--Pablo Neruda