Chapter 12 Dedication: To Mathilde

Neruda My beloved wife, I was tormented writing these falsely called "sonnets";But when the title is dedicated to you, the joy I feel in my heart is as vast as the prairie.When I embarked on this writing project, I knew that since ancient times poets have from all sides, with elegant and outstanding taste, created sonnets with sounds like silver, like crystal, like cannon fire; however, I am very humble To create these sonnets with wood as the material, to give them the sound of opaque pure matter, and transmit it to your ears.Walking in the forest, on the beach, by the hidden lakeside, in the ashes, you and I have picked up natural twigs, pieces of wood that come and go with the water and the weather.With hatchets, cutlasses, and pocket knives, Of such soft waste, I make these piles of love; With fourteen planks, I build each hut, That your eyes that I adore and sing live in it.Having told the foundations of my love, I hand over to you this century: where wooden sonnets arose because you gave them life.

October 1959