naked in the eyes of Neruda

why oh why, when i see your nakedness
do i feel such awe
as to feel so much in oneness
yet alone in the raw
and as the light touches your very skin
while silently you sit in stillness
i am captured in a breathe
fixated on the loveliness...


Naked, you are simple as one of your hands,
smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round:
you have moon-lines, apple-pathways:
naked, you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked, you are blue as a night in Cuba;
you have vines and stars in your hair;
naked, you are spacious and yellow
as summer in a golden church.

Naked, you are tiny as one of your nails-
curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born
and you withdraw to the underground world,

as if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores:
your clear light dims, gets dressed - drops its leaves-
and becomes a naked hand again.