Sonnet VIII

Sonnet VIII

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,

of a day full [here, interrupted by the baby waking -- continued about 26

hours later ]

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.

Pablo Neruda