Pablo Neruda · 70 pages
Rating: (39.7K votes)
“I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
“Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
“Then love knew it was called love.
And when I lifted my eyes to your name,
suddenly your heart showed me my way”
“I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
“It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.”
“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.”
“And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”
“وفي عينيك الحزينتين يبدأ وطن الحلم.”
“There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.”
“مثل البحر، مثل الزمن. فيكِ غَرِقَ كل شيء!”
“Every day you play with the light of the universe.”
“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.”
“sometimes i get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet.”
“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.”
“كم هو قصيرٌ الحب، وكم هو طويلٌ النسيان”
“كنتُ أتذكّرك وروحي تضيق
بهذا الحزن الذي تعرفين.
أين كنتِ آنئذٍ؟
بين أيّ أناس؟
أيّة كلمات كنتِ تقولين؟
لماذا يداهمُني كل هذا الحب
عندما أشعر بالحزن، وأَشعرُ بكِ بعيدة؟”
“Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.”
“تعجبينني حين تصمتين وأنت كالبعيدة.
وأنتِ كأنك تئنّين، فراشة ترفّّ.
وتَسمعينني من بعيد، وصوتي لا يصل إليكِ.
دعيني أصمت مع صمتك.”
“Entre los labios y la voz, algo se va muriendo.
Algo con alas de pájaro, algo de angustia y de olvido”
“نحن، اللذَيْن كنّا آنذاك، لم نعد كما كُنّا”
“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.”
“أُحِبُّ ما ليس عندي. كم أنتِ بعيدة.”
“أنا اليائسُ، الكلمةُ بلا أصداء،
الذي فقد كل شيء، وكان لديه كل شيء.”
“لأنّي في ليالٍ مثل هذه أخذتها بين ذراعيّ،
روحي ليست راضيةً بأنّي أضعتُها.”
“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.”
“وعصافيرُ كانت تنامُ في روحِك
أيقظتُها، وكم فرّتْ وهاجرتْ.”
“The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.”
“أستطيع أن أكتب الأشعار الأكثر حزناً هذه الليلة.”
“As soon as a friendship passed a certain point - some obscure and secret boundary - a woman quite automatically became overwhelmed by a raging compulsion to complicate things.”
“Out of all the things you could not have there were some that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good.”
“how short a time the fire of love endures in woman
if frequent sight and touch do not rekindle it.”
“It was the mystery that biologists from Darwin onwards had been longing to solve. How could we understand the ability of fish and seals to survive in the cold dark waters of the Antarctic? How could humans see inside a biotope that was sealed with layers of ice? What would the Earth look like from the sky, if we crossed the Mediterranean on the back of a goose? How did it feel to be a bee? How could we measure the speed of an insect’s wings and its heartbeat, or monitor its blood pressure and eating patterns? What was the impact of human activities, like shipping noise or subsea explosions, on mammals in the depths? How could we follow animals to places where no human could venture?”
“The gods grow jealous of too much contentment anywhere, and they show their displeasure all of a sudden.”
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