Naked, you are simple as a hand,
smooth, earthy, small...transparent, round.
You have moon lines and apple paths;
Naked, you are slender as the wheat.
Naked, Cuban blue midnight is your color,
Naked, I trace the stars and vines in your hair;
Naked, you are spacious and yellow
As a summer's wholeness in a golden church.
Naked, you are tiny as your fingernail;
Subtle and curved in the rose-colored dawn
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.
~~Pablo Neruda
