I Crave Your Mouth
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
I Crave Your Mouth - context Summary
From 1924 Love Collection
This poem appears in Neruda’s 1924 collection Veinte poemas de amor y una canci’n desesperada and belongs to his early, intensely romantic phase. It channels youthful desire into stark, physical imagery of hunger and consumption, turning longing into a searching, almost animal pursuit. The speaker’s appetite for the beloved combines erotic urgency with elemental natural references, situating private passion within a broader Chilean sensibility. As context, the poem reflects Neruda’s early preoccupation with bodily love and the fervent tone that made the collection influential in his reputation.
Read Complete Analyses
Feel free to be first to leave comment.