By Juan Ramon Jimenez
Date: 5 August 1999

What Does Love Smell Like?

Love, what does it smell like? 
It seems, when you're in love,
That the whole world has the light 
Murmur of a bubbling spring.
Dry leaves and branches laden with snow
Turn green 
And love follows, 
Smelling sweet as a never-fading rose.
In every place love opens unseen garlands of flowers,
In the depths of its background is poetry--laughter or sorrow--
A woman's kiss takes on the magic air
Of  ever renewed life,
Like what bursts forth along footpaths
With wildflowers, bushes and berrypatches 
That go off into the countryside 
From those green country lanes.
Love is the music of perfect symphonies, 
The words of a light breeze, 
Among copses of trees, come to the heart.
You sigh, you cry;
Sighing and crying
Lying on your back in the grass
Under the romantic, cool 
Freshness of honeysuckle vines.