Love Sonnet XI
I crave your mouth, your voice, you hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda’s Lion
‘The man who doesn’t play has lost forever the
child who lived in him, and he will certainly miss him.’

In a blue Santiago home sits a stuffed lion
teller of tales no-one would believe
answerer of difficult questions

The poet wrestled with him on the sofa
he accompanied him on official engagements
sitting in the front seat of his car

The man-child swallowed the world
coloured feathers, broken fans
shattered glass, charred lines in the mud
bottles, monstrosities, shells
insects embalmed in glass
Olive Senior’s umbilical chord
the string from a kite, pipes, teeth
eggs, even a black steam engine
resembling Walt Whitman

He wrote in green ‘the colour of life’
built this house in blue for a third wife
with leafy courtyards and winding paths
named it La Chascona after her unruly hair
and like the lion-roaring sun here and there
he placed a bough of bright fruit to sit
against the darkness of her dress

In the dappled shade of the garden
two paths ascend side by side
one straight, one crooked, leading to
the high ground near the library

The stranger must choose a way

In Che Guevara’s duffel bag a dog-eared
book of verse which he read aloud each night
twenty love poems – only twenty?
and a song of despair – only one?

Happy life overlooking the drinkable sea
telescope by the bed
with only the lion’s roar of Lorca
assassinated on the streets of Madrid
still echoing in his head.

Alan E