Sonnet Sunday: Neruda

Sonnet 16, translated by Terence Clarke

I love the clump of earth that you are,
because, from the planetary prairies,
I have no other star. You repeat
the universal multiplications.

Your wide eyes are the light that's left
of the defeated constellations.
Your skin quivers like the trails left
in the rain by the passing meteor.

Of so much of the moon, for me, were your hips,
of the entire sun your deep mouth and its delicacy,
of so much burning light, like shadowed honey,

your heart, charred with long red rays.
And so I pass by your fiery form, kissing you,
planetary and small, my geography, my dove.