When your hands leap toward mine,

When your hands leap toward mine, Love,

what do they bring me in flight?

Why did they stop at my lips, so suddenly,

why do I know them, as if once before, I have touched them,

as if, before being, they travelled my forehead, my waist?

Their smoothness came winging through time,

over the sea and the smoke, over the Spring,

and when you laid your hands on my chest

I knew those wings of the gold doves,

I knew that clay, and that colour of grain.

The years of my life have been roadways of searching,

a climbing of stairs, a crossing of reefs.

Trains hurled me onwards, waters recalled me,

on the surface of grapes it seemed that I touched you.

Wood, of a sudden, made contact with you,

the almond-tree summoned your hidden smoothness,

until both your hands closed on my chest,

like a pair of wings ending their flight.

poem by Pablo Neruda