…from Pablo Neruda’s Cien Sone­tos de Amor:

XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of car­na­tions the fire shoots off.
I love you as cer­tain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
‘
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but car­ries in itself the light of hid­den flow­ers;
thanks to your love a cer­tain solid fra­grance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
‘
I love you with­out know­ing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straight­for­wardly, with­out com­plex­i­ties or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
‘
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
‘
LXVI
‘
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 the cold into
‘
the fire. I love you only because it’s you
I love; I hate you no end, 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 the 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 in blood.
‘
LXXIII
‘
Maybe you’ll remem­ber that razor-faced man
who slipped out from the dark like a blade
and — before we real­ized — knew what was there:
he saw the smoke and con­cluded fire.
‘
The pal­lid woman with black hair
rose like a fish from the abyss,
and the two of them built up a con­trap­tion,
armed to the teeth, against love.
‘
Man and woman, they felled moun­tains and gar­dens,
then went down to the river, they scaled the walls,
they hoisted their atro­cious artillery up the hill.
‘
Then love knew it was called love.
And when I lifted my eyes to your name,
sud­denly your heart showed me my way.

Just putting this out there in the abyss.