β
Everything you can imagine is real.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Love)
β
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
β
As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
β
Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
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
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Selected Poems)
β
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
But I love your feet
only because they walked
upon the earth and upon
the wind and upon the waters,
until they found me.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll be the pope.' Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
β
β
Pablo Picasso (Pablo Picasso: Metamorphoses of the Human Form : Graphic Works, 1895-1972)
β
In this part of the story I am the one who
dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Laughter is the language of the soul.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
You are like nobody since I love you.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
And I, infinitesimaΒl being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping
but
I shall go on living.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child
hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands....
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
β
It takes a very long time to become young.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Then love knew it was called love.
And when I lifted my eyes to your name,
suddenly your heart showed me my way
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Veinte poemas de amor y una canciΓ³n desesperada; Cien sonetos de amor)
β
We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day)
β
The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I donβt know any other way of loving.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
β
What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Love.
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
Flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer
Remember your hands; how did your lips
Feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues
Drowsing in the parks, the white statues that
Have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice;
I have forgotten your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to
My vague memory of you. I live with pain
That is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
Make to me an irreperable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing
Vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to
Glimpse you in every window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of
Summer pain me; because of you, I again
Seek out the signs that precipitate desires:
Shooting stars, falling objects.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Regalo de un Poeta)
β
In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?
β
β
Pablo Neruda (The Book of Questions)
β
If You Forget Me
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day)
β
Love! Love until the night collapses!
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Machu Picchu)
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I got lost in the night, without the light
of your eyelids, and when the night surrounded me
I was born again: I was the owner of my own darkness.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Bitter love, a violet with it's crown of thorns in a thicet of spiky passions, spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come to conquer my soul? What brought you?
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Don't go far off, not even for a day,
because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in
an empty station when the trains are
parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
on the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
have gone so far I'll wander mazily
over all the earth, asking, will you
come back? Will you leave me here, dying?
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
While I'm writing, I'm far away;
and when I come back, I've gone.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Quiero que sepas
una cosa.
Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habrΓ© olvidado.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
Love is the mystery of water and a star.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair)
β
The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
If suddenly you do not exist,
If suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.
I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.
I shall go on living.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
I should like to sleep like a cat,
with all the fur of time,
with a tongue rough as flint,
with the dry sex of fire;
and after speaking to no one,
stretch myself over the world,
over roofs and landscapes,
with a passionate desire
to hunt the rats in my dreams.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes?
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
There are only two types of women: goddesses and doormats.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Love Poems)
β
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
And that's why i have to go back
to so many places
there to find myself
and constantly examine myself
with no witness but the moon
and then whistle with joy,
ambling over rocks and clods of earth,
with no task but to live,
with no family but the road.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
My soul is an empty carousel at sunset.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.
They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day)
β
Give me your hand
out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I do not seek. I find.
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.
Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.
In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death
Perhaps the world can teach us
as when everything seems dead
but later proves to be alive.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
To draw, you must close your eyes and sing
β
β
Pablo Picasso
β
I want to see thirst
In the syllables,
Tough fire
In the sound;
Feel through the dark
For the scream.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Hereβs a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didnβt stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on βBright Eyes.β
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia ComΔneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures βDavidβ and βPietaβ by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech βI Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driverβs order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".
40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
β
β
Pablo
β
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuΓ‘nto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oΓdo.
De otro. SerΓ‘ de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
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 Γ©sta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque Γ©ste sea el ΓΊltimo dolor que ella me causa,
y Γ©stos sean los ΓΊltimos versos que yo le escribo.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
β
Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (Intimacies: Poems of Love)
β
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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda (If You Forget Me)
β
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
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.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
fool 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.
β
β
Pablo Neruda
β
With a chaste heart
With pure eyes I celebrate your beauty
Holding the leash of blood
So that it might leap out and trace your outline
Where you lie down in my Ode
As in a land of forests or in surf
In aromatic loam, or in sea music
Beautiful nude
Equally beautiful your feet
Arched by primeval tap of wind or sound
Your ears, small shells
Of the splendid American sea
Your breasts of level plentitude
Fulfilled by living light
Your flying eyelids of wheat
Revealing or enclosing
The two deep countries of your eyes
The line your shoulders have divided into pale regions
Loses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple
Continues separating your beauty down into two columns of
Burnished gold
Fine alabaster
To sink into the two grapes of your feet
Where your twin symmetrical tree burns again and rises
Flowering fire
Open chandelier
A swelling fruit
Over the pact of sea and earth
From what materials
Agate?
Quartz?
Wheat?
Did your body come together?
Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills
The cleavage of one petal
Sweet fruits of a deep velvet
Until alone remained
Astonished
The fine and firm feminine form
It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your body
Yet suffocate itself
So much is clarity
Taking its leave of you
As if you were on fire within
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
β
β
Pablo Neruda