Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you, 

from waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you bend to you, 

and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume 

my heart with its cruel ray, 

stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who dies, 

the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood. 

If You Forget Me

I want you to know one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look at the crystal moon, 

at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch near the fire, the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners that passes through my life,
and you decide to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember that on that day,
at that hour, 

I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine. 

Tonight's reading, poems by Pablo Neruda.