“
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love: Ten Poems)
“
I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
”
”
Pablo Neruda
“
Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you
If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember
That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
And my roots will set off to seek another land
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Selected Poems)
“
I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I have slept with you all night long while the dark earth spins with the living and the dead, and on waking suddenly in the midst of the shadow my arm encircled your waist. Neither night nor sleep could separate us.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
I have named you queen.
There are taller than you, taller.
There are purer than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.
When you go through the streets
No one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
At the carpet of red gold
That you tread as you pass,
The nonexistent carpet.
And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.
Only you and I,
Only you and I, my love,
Listen to it.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
”
”
Pablo Neruda
“
Every day you play with the light of the universe.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
sometimes i get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Amor"
So many days, oh so many days
seeing you so tangible and so close,
how do I pay, with what do I pay?
The bloodthirsty spring
has awakened in the woods.
The foxes start from their earths,
the serpents drink the dew,
and I go with you in the leaves
between the pines and the silence,
asking myself how and when
I will have to pay for my luck.
Of everything I have seen,
it's you I want to go on seeing:
of everything I've touched,
it's your flesh I want to go on touching.
I love your orange laughter.
I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.
What am I to do, love, loved one?
I don't know how others love
or how people loved in the past.
I live, watching you, loving you.
Being in love is my nature.
You please me more each afternoon.
Where is she? I keep on asking
if your eyes disappear.
How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt.
I feel poor, foolish and sad,
and you arrive and you are lightning
glancing off the peach trees.
That's why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.
That's why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Intimacies: Poems of Love)
“
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
I remembered you with my soul clenched
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
The morning is full of storm
in the heart of summer.
The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye,
the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands.
The numberless heart of the wind
beating above our loving silence.
Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees
like a language full of wars and songs.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Life is so short. Forgetting is so long
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul
You live again in time, slender and silent.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Love is so short, and forgetting takes so long.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything,
without anguish, death, winter waiting along it
with their eyes open through the dew.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
WANT TO DO WITH YOU WHAT SPRING DOES WITH THE CHERRY TREES.” Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair *
”
”
Chance Carter (Bad Boy Daddy (Naughty Boy, #1))
“
Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I like for you to be still: it is as though you are absent
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died
One word then, one smile is enough
And I'm happy; happy that it's not true
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Your house sounds like a train at midday,
the wasps buzz, the saucepans sing,
the waterfall enumerates the deeds of the dew . . .
”
”
Pablo Neruda
“
Sometimes a piece of the sun burned like a coin between my hands.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Me gustas cuando callas porque estas como austente y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca. Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca. Como todas las cosas estan llenas de mi alma emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mia. Mariposa de sueno, te pareces a mi alma, y te pareces a la palabra melancolia.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her,
And the verse falls to the snow like dew to the pasture.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant's body digs in you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!
Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Selected Poems)
“
And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.
Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.
Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Laugh at the night, at the day, at the moon, laugh at the twisted streets of the island, laugh at this clumsy boy who loves you, but when I open my eyes and close them, when my steps go, when my steps return, deny me bread, air, light, spring, but never your laughter for I would die.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
Tonight I Can Write
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Dark is the world’s night without you my love,
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems)
“
ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
I learned about life
from life itself,
love I learned in a single kiss
and could teach no one anything
except that I have lived
with something in common among men,
when fighting with them,
when saying all their say in my song.
Pablo Neruda- "Ode to the Book,
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Selected Poems)
“
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I have named you queen. There are taller ones than you, taller. There are purer ones than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier. But you are the queen.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor y es tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
But you, cloudless girl, question of smoke, corn tassel.
You were what the wind was making with illuminated leaves.
Behind the nocturnal mountains, white lily of conflagration,
ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Tonight I Can Write
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
...And I watch my words
from a long way off..
They are more YOURS than mine..
They climb on my old suffering
like ivy...
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
deny me bread, air, light, spring, but never your laughter for I would die.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short; forgetting is so long.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
asi te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?
”
”
Pablo Neruda
“
Bring your substance deep down to me, heavily, covering my eyes, let your existence cut across me, supposing that my heart is destroyed.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
In you the wars and the flights accumulated,
From you the wings of the songbirds rose.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
we shall always be, you and i,
alone upon the earth,
to begin life.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
Only with kisses and red poppies can I love you,
with rain-soaked wreaths,
contemplating ashen horses and yellow dogs.
Only with waves at my back can I love you,
between dull explosions of brimstone and reflective waters,
swimming against cemeteries that circulate in certain rivers,
drowned pasture flooding the sad, chalky tombstones,
swimming across submerged hearts
and faded lists of unburied children.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks"
All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
But my words become stained with your love. You occupy everything, you occupy everything.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
My kisses fell, happy as embers.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
The Potter
Your whole body is
A glass of wine
Or sweetness destined for me.
When I raise my hand,
I find in every place a dove
Seeking for me,
As if, my love,
You were made of clay
For my very hands of a potter.
Your knees, your breasts,
Your waist,
Disappear in me like in a hollow
Of a thirsting earth
Where they lose
A form,
And together
We become like a single river,
Like a single grain of sand.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.
Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.
And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.
Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.
Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.
The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.
Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.
But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.
I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Settle your perfect hips here and the bow of wet arrows
loosens into the night the petals that form your form
let your clay limbs climb the silence and its pale ladder
rung by rung taking off with me in my dream.
I can sense you scaling the shade tree that sings to the
shadows.
Dark is the world’s night without you my love,
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems)
“
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.
The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.
The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.
Pablo Neruda
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
XII Para Mi Corazon (Your Breast is Enough)"
Your breast is enough for my heart,
and my wings for your freedom.
What was sleeping above your soul will rise
out of my mouth to heaven.
In you is the illusion of each day.
You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers.
You undermine the horizon with your absence.
Eternally in flight like the wave.
I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.
You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
..her eyes were the color of faraway love
her arms were matching topazes
her lips moved soundlessly in the coral light
and ultimately, she left by the door..
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all timetables.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Between the lips and the voice something goes dying.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses---that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being and unites all living things.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems)
“
My love, suddenly
your hip
is the curve of the wineglass
filled to the brim,
your breast is the cluster,
your hair the light of alcohol,
your nipples, the grapes
your navel pure seal
stamped on your barrel of a belly,
and your love the cascade
of unquenchable wine,
the brightness that falls on my senses,
the earthen splendor of life.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems)
“
Every Day You Play....
Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water,
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands.
You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.
The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I alone can contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.
You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Curl round me as though you were frightened.
Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.
Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.
My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
Until I even believe that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,
y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado
y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.
.
Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.
Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.
.
Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante.
Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.
Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:
Déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.
.
Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio
claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.
Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.
Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.
.
Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.
Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.
Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.
Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I remembered you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
But I love your feet only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
Entonces,dónde estabas?
Entre qué gentes?
Diciendo qué palabras?
Por qué se me vendrá todo el amor de golpe
Cuando me siento triste,y te siento tan lejana?
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
as if I had never walked except with you, my heart, as if I could not walk except with you, as if I could not sing except when you sing.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
I want to fill my mouth with your name.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it's not true.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
I have said that you sang in the wind
like the pines and like the masts.
Like them you are tall and taciturn,
and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.
You gather things to you like an old road.
You are peopled with echoes and nostalgic voices.
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated
that had been sleeping in your soul.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
and when a leaf falls from the climbing vines, you know, my love, what name is written on that leaf, a name that is yours and mine, our love name, a single being, the arrow that pierced winter, the invincible love, the fire of the days, a leaf that dropped upon my breast, a leaf from the tree of life that made a nest and sang, that put out roots, that gave flowers and fruits. And so you see, my love, how I move around the island, around the world, safe in the midst of spring, crazy with light in the cold, walking tranquil in the fire, lifting your petal weight in my arms as if I had never walked except with you, my heart, as if I could not walk except with you, as if I could not sing except when you sing.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
I Ask for Silence"
Now they can leave me in peace.
Now they grow used to my absence.
I am going to close my eyes.
I want only five things,
five chosen roots.
One is an endless love.
Two is to see the autumn.
I cannot exist without leaves
flying and falling to the earth.
The third is the solemn winter,
the rain I loved, the caress
of fire in the rough cold.
Fourth, the summer,
plump as a watermelon.
And fifthly, your eyes,
Matilde, my dear love,
I won’t sleep without your eyes,
I won’t exist without your gaze,
I adjust the spring
for you to follow me with your eyes.
That, friends, is all I want.
Next to nothing, close to everything.
Now they can go if they wish.
I have lived so much that some day
they will have to forget me forcibly,
rubbing me off the blackboard.
My heart was inexhaustible.
But because I ask for silence,
don’t think I’m going to die.
The opposite is true;
it happens I am going to live.
To be, and to go on being.
I will not be, however, if inside me,
the crop does not keep sprouting,
the shoots first, breaking through the earth
to reach the light;
but the mothering earth is dark,
and, deep inside me, I am dark.
I am a well in the water of which
the night leaves behind stars
and goes on alone across fields.
It’s a question of having lived so much
that I want to live a bit more.
I never felt my voice so clear,
never have been so rich in kisses.
Now, as always, it is early.
The light is a swarm of bees.
Let me alone with the day.
I ask leave to be born.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (I Explain a Few Things: Selected Poems (English and Spanish Edition))
“
Sonnet XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
“
. . . they will say: "The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep, more other . . .
”
”
Pablo Neruda
“
Pay to go inside Neruda's home
A body lies there with no dome.
But right there in the front hall
Lean a fairy against the icy wall.
Oh Endless enigmas had the bard!
Nice and large and calm backyard
Ends In the middle of a rare room
Rare portrait of revelishing gloom.
Up climbing at the weird snail stair
Does make you grasp for some air.
And there's a room with bric-a-brac:
Old and precious books all in a pack.
Dare saying what I liked most of all?
Enjoyed seeing visitors having a ball!
”
”
Ana Claudia Antunes (ACross Tic)
“
Book, when I close you
life itself opens.
I hear
broken screams
in the harbor.
The copper slugs
cross the sandy areas,
descending to Tocopilla.
It is night.
Between the islands
our ocean
palpitates with fish.
It touches the feet, the thighs,
the chalky ribs
of my homeland.
Night touches the shoreline
and rises while singing
at daybreak
like a guitar awakening.
I feel the irresistible force
of the ocean's call. I am
called by the wind,
and called by Rodriguez,
José Antonio,
I received a telegram
from the "Mina" worker's union
and the one I love
(I won't tell you her name)
waits for me in Bucalemu.
Book, you haven't been able
to enwrap me,
you haven't covered me
with typography,
with celestial impressions,
you haven't been able
to trap my eyes between covers,
I leave you so I can populate groves
with the hoarse family of my song,
to work burning metals
or to eat grilled meat
at the fireside in the mountains.
I love books
that are explorers,
books with forest and snow,
depth and sky,
but
I despise
the book of spiders
that employs thought
to weave its venomous wires
to trap the young
and unsuspecting fly.
Book, free me.
I don't want to be entombed
like a volume,
I don't come from a tome,
my poems don't eat poems,
they devour
passionate events,
they're nurtured by the open air
and fed by the earth
and by men.
Book, let me wander the road
with dust in my low shoes
and without mythology:
go back to the library
while I go into the streets.
I've learned to take life
from life,
to love after a single kiss,
and I didn't teach anything to anyone
except what I myself lived,
what I shared with other men,
what I fought along with them:
what I expressed from all of us in my song.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (All the Odes)
“
شعر آخر
می توانم امشب غمناک ترین سطرها را بنویسم
مثلن بنویسم: ” شب شکسته است
وَ تکه تکه می شوند آن ستارگان در دور دست و بر باد می روند”
شب- باد، در آسمان می پیچد و می خواند
می توانم امشب غمناک ترین سطرها را بنویسم
عاشق اش بودم و گاهی هم عاشق ام می شد
در شبی این چنین به آغوش اش کشیدم
بوسیدم اش بسیار و بسیار زیر آسمان بی انتها
عاشق ام بود و گاهی هم عاشق اش می شدم
چه گونه می توانستم عاشق آن چشمان درشتِ خاموش اش نباشم
می توانم امشب غمناک ترین سطرها را بنویسم
برای درکِ این که ندارم اش، برای حسِ این که گم اش کرده ام
می شنوم این شب بلند را، که بی او طولانی تر
بر روح می نشیند این سطرها، مثل شبنم که بر علف
دیگر چه اهمیت دارد، که نتواستم نگه اش دارم
شب شکسته ست و او کنارم نیست
این تمام ماجراست. کسی در دور دست می خواند. در دور دست
روح ام را یارای نبودن اش نیست
که انگار در تقلای یافتن اش چشمانم دو دو می زند
که قلبم می جویدش: اوکنارم نیست
شبی شبیه بر همان شاخ ساران به صبح می رسد
مای آن زمان، شبیه حالِ ما نیست
بی گمان، عاشقش نیستم اکنون، اما چه گونه زمانی بودم
برای رسیدنِ به او، صدایم، به تقلای جستجوی باد است
بوسه های دیگران بر لبانش، چون بوسه های من
صدایش، تن مرمرین اش، چشمان بی انتهایش
بی گمان، عاشق اش نیستم اکنون شاید اما باشم
عشق کوتاه است؛ از یاد بردن اش چه طولانی
از آن شب ها که در آغوش می کشیدم اش دیگر
روحم را یارای نبودن اش نیست
هرچند این واپسین عذابی است که مرا دچارش می کند
و این واپسین سطرهایی ست که برایش می نویسم
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
XVI.
In My Sky At Twilight"
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.
The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
My sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!
You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depths of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.
You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are as wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
VI.
I Remember You As You Were"
I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.
Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.
I feel your eyes travelling, and the autumn is far off:
grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
toward which my deep longings migrated
and my kisses fell, happy as embers.
Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
“
ALWAYS Facing you I am not jealous. Come with a man at your back, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your bosom and your feet, come like a river filled with drowned men that meets the furious sea, the eternal foam, the weather. Bring them all where I wait for you: we shall always be alone, we shall always be, you and I, alone upon the earth to begin life.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)