A selection of Pablo Neruda's poems by Nadia N Bree

"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests"

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.” 

“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.”

“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.”

“To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.” 

“Sonnet XVII” 

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

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 don't 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 it is your eyes that close.

“The Queen”

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.

When you go through the streets no one recognises 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. 

“Saddest Lines” 

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. 

Write, for example: "The night is shattered,  and the blue stars shiver in the distance." 

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. 

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.  That I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. 

On nights like this one, I held her in my arms.  I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. 

She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too.  How could one not not have loved her great, still eyes? 

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.  To think that I do not have her. To feel 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 shattered, 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 searches for her as though to go to her.  My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. 

The same night whitening the same the same trees.  We, we who were, are no longer the same. 

I no longer love her, that is certain, but how I loved her.  My voice tried to find the wind to touch her ear. 

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before  Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes. 

I no longer love her, that is certain, but maybe I love her.  Love is so short, forgetting 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.

“Tie your heart at night to mine, love” 

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,

and both will defeat the darkness

like twin drums beating in the forest

against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream

that cuts the thread of earthly orbs

with the punctuality of a headlong train

that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,

to the grip on life that beats in your breast,

with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply

to the sky’s questioning stars

with one key, one door closed to shadow.