in you everything sank

How does Neruda do it, from what deep pool of language, transcending English and Spanish, does he pull his words Ebrio de trementina y largos besos...rápido y lento en la energía subceleste? His language is the speech of the raw senses, clear as the beaded droplets of the late-night rain on the Andes, the crystal ceiling of the airy Altiplano, fallen from height to the material realm of the flesh.

DRUNK WITH PINES

Drunk with pines and long kisses,

like summer I steer the fast sail of the roses,

bent towards the death of the thin day,

stuck into my solid marine madness.

Pale and lashed to my ravenous water,

I cruise in the sour smell of the naked climate,

still dressed in gray and bitter sounds

and a sad crest of abandoned spray.

Hardened by passions, I go mounted on my one wave,

lunar, solar, burning and cold, all at once,

becalmed in the throat of the fortunate isles

that are white and sweet as cool hips.

In the moist night my garment of kisses trembles

charged to insanity with electric currents,

heroically divided into dreams

and intoxicating roses practicing on me.

Upstream, in the midst of the outer waves,

your parallel body yields to my arms

like a fish infinitely fastened to my soul,

quick and slow, in the energy under the sky.

           —Pablo Neruda, translated from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin