What does this poem mean? Pablo Neruda...?

Question

Sonnet V of Pablo Neruda's One Hundred Sonnets of Love.
Anyone that can help, please do.

I did not touch your night, or your air, or dawn:
only the earth, the truth of the fruit on clusters,
the apples that swell as they drink the sweet water,
the clay and the resins of your sweet-smelling land.

From Quinchamali where your eyes began,
to the Frontera where your feet were made for me,
you are my dark familiar clay: touching your hips,
I touch the wheat in its fields again.

Woman from Arauco, maybe you didn't know
how before I loved you, I forgot your kisses.
But my heart went on, remembering your mouth - and I went on

and on through the streets like a man wounded,
until I understood, Love: I had found
my place, a land of kisses and volcanoes.

Answer 1

It is a metaphor of a woman as the land. He did not know her dreams(night), her life(air) or her birth(dawn). He only knew what she was like now (last two lines 1st stanza thru the next stanza). He didn't even remember her until he loved her. It wasn't until later that he realized that he was in love with her. She was his land of "kisses and volcanoes".

Answer 2

I never have understood how to judge poetry let alone what some of it means But Johns is right since I looked up Quinchamali, Frontera, and Arauco in google search.

Poems are timeless even to the writer and so passions or emotions he is describing could have happened at any time before that point when the muse encouraged him to write it.

Answer 3

The poet is writing a love sonnet to Chile, his native land, which he compares to a woman.

Answer 4

It means what ever you think it means.