Sonnet LXXXIX

The Love Poetry of Pablo Neruda

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands

to pass their freshness over me once more:

I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny. 

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep. 

I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you

to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,

to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

I want what I love to continue to live,

and you whom I love and sang above everything else

to continue to flourish, full-flowered:

so that you can reach everything my love directs you to,

so that my shadow can travel along in your hair, 

so that everything can learn the reason for my song.