Read "The Sea and Manuelita" by Pablo Neruda online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
She brought me here, the womanly sailor,
Colan's shipper, the brave one.
The ravishing lady guided me, I remember her, a siren of rifles, a widow of nets, a little Creole merchant of honey, doves, pineapples, and pistols.
She slept among the casks, familiar with the insurgent gunpowder, with the fish just caught shivering on the ship, with the gold of the most fugitive days, with the phosphorescent dream of earth for an anchor.
Yes, I recall her dark tuberose skin, her turbulent eyes, her short hands like iron.
I remember the lost commander; she lived here gliding over these same waves, but I don't know where she vanished.
I don't know where she left her last kiss for love, or where the last wave reached her.