Luis Cernuda: If a man could say what he loves

If a man could say how much he loves,
if a man could raise his love in the sky
like a cloud in the light;
if like falling walls,
in order to salute the truth, straightened in the middle,
he could plunge his body headlong,
leaving just the truth about his love,
the truth about himself,
which is not called glory, nor fortune, nor ambition,
but love or desire,
I would be the one who imagined;
the one who, with his tongue, his eyes and his hands,
proclaims in front of the men the ignored truth,
the truth about his true love.

Freedom I do not know but the freedom of being imprisoned in anybody
whose name I cannot hear without chill;
someone for whom I forget this mean existence,
for whom the day and the night are for me whatever he wants,
and my body and spirit float in his body and spirit
like lost logs that the sea submerges or raises
freely, with the freedom of love,
the only freedom that exalts me,
the only truth for which I die.

You justify my existence:
if I do not meet you, I haven't lived;
if I die without meeting you, I don't die, because I haven't lived.