Ode To the Smell of Wood - by Pablo Neruda

Late, with the stars
open in the cold
I open the door.
The sea galloped
in the night.
Like a hand from the dark house
came the intense aroma of firewood in the pile.
The aroma was visible as if the tree were alive.
As if it still breathed.
Visible like a garment.
Visible like a broken branch.
I walked into the house surrounded
by that balsam-flavored darkness.
Outside the points in the sky sparkled
like magnetic stone
sand the smell of the wood
touched my heart like some fingers,
like jasmine,
like certain memories.
It wasn't the sharp smell
of the pines,no,it wasn't
the break in the skin
of the eucalyptus,neither was it
the green perfumes
of the grapevine stalk,but
something more secret,because that fragrance
only one
only one
time existed,
and there, of all I have seen in the world
in my own house at night, next to the winter sea,
was waiting for methe smell
of the deepest rose,
the heart cut from the earth,
something that invaded me like a wave
breaking loose
from timeand it lost itself in me
when I opened the door
of the night.