“Drunk With Pines”, Neruda

Could Neruda be the contemporary descendant of Sappho?

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.