I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty.

Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. Three days after being hospitalised Neruda died of heart failure; however there are doubts as to whether or not the junta had a hand in his death. Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager.