Pablo Neruda

July 12, 1904 / Parral, Chile - September 23, 1973 / Santiago, Chile

Sonnet Viii: If Your Eyes Were Not The Color Of The Moon

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,
of a day full
of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,
if you were not an amber week,

not the yellow moment
when autumn climbs up through the vines;
if you were not that bread the fragrant moon
kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky,

oh, my dearest, I could not love you so!
But when I hold you I hold everything that is -
sand, time, the tree of the rain,

everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all:
in your life I see everything that lives.
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