Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda Poems

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
...

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.
...

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because -
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.
...

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
...

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
...

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.
...

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

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

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
...

9.

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
...

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
...

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
...

Translated from the Spanish by Christopher Logue

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
...

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
Write for example: ‘The night is fractured
and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’
...

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
...

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
...

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
your hard little feet.
...

How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
...

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.
...

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
...

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."
...

Pablo Neruda Biography

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet and diplomat who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential poets of the 20th century. He was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile, and began writing poetry as a teenager. Neruda's early poetry was heavily influenced by modernist and surrealist movements, but he later developed his own unique style, characterized by his vivid imagery, political themes, and passion for life. His most famous collections include Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), Residencia en la Tierra (1933), and Canto General (1950), which chronicles the history of Latin America and the struggles of its people. Neruda was a committed communist and spent much of his life advocating for social justice and political change. He served as a senator for the Communist Party in Chile and was later forced to go into hiding when the government declared communism illegal. During this time, he wrote some of his most powerful political poetry. In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his "poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams." He was also known for his work as a diplomat, serving as a consul in several countries and representing Chile at the United Nations. Neruda died in 1973, just days after a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile. His death is widely believed to have been caused by heart failure, but many have also speculated that he was poisoned by the military regime. His poetry continues to be celebrated around the world for its beauty, passion, and political significance.

Life of Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutiınary leader Luis Carlos Prestes on July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in Brazil. Neruda had a number of political posts during his lifetime, including a stint as a Chilean Communist Party senator. In 1948, when conservative Chilean President González Videla declared communism illegal, a warrant for Neruda's arrest was issued. In the Chilean port of Valparaso, friends harbored him for months in a home basement. Later, through a mountain route near Maihue Lake in Argentina, Neruda slipped into exile. Years later, Neruda became a close associate of Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile. Allende asked Neruda to read at the Estadio Nacional in front of 70,000 people when he returned to Chile following his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Neruda was hospitalized because of cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Neruda died of heart failure three days after being admitted to the hospital. Neruda's death echoed over the world, as he was already a legend in life. Pinochet had refused to allow Neruda's burial to be turned into a public event. Thousands of heartbroken Chileans, on the other hand, violated the curfew and swarmed the streets.

Legacy of Pablo Neruda

Neruda's poetry is so diverse and deep that it defies easy categorization or summarization. It did, however, developed in four distinct directions. His love poetry is sensitive, sad, sensual, and passionate, as seen by the juvenile Twenty Love Poems and the mature Los versos del Capitán (1952; The Captain's Verses). Loneliness and sadness submerge the author in a subterranean realm of dark, demonic powers in "material" poetry like Residencia en la tierra. His epic poetry is best represented by Canto general, which is a Whitmanesque attempt at reinterpreting the past and present of Latin America and the struggle of its oppressed and downtrodden masses toward freedom. Finally, in Odas elementales, Neruda writes poems on daily things, animals, and plants. Neruda’s work is gathered in Obras completas (1973; 4th ed. expanded, 3 vol.). Four essential works are Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, translated by W.S. Merwin (1969, reissued 1993); Residence on Earth, and Other Poems, translated by Angel Flores (1946, reprinted 1976); Canto general, translated by Jack Schmitt (1991); and Elementary Odes of Pablo Neruda, translated by Carlos Lozano (1961). All the Odes (2013) collected Neruda’s odes both in the original Spanish and in English translation. Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda (2016) is a collection (in Spanish and English) of 21 previously unpublished poems discovered in his archives.)

The Best Poem Of Pablo Neruda

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.

Pablo Neruda Comments

Fabrizio Frosini 24 November 2015

'' The poet is not a 'little god'. No, it is not a 'little god'. '' [..] El poeta no es un pequeño dios. No, no es un pequeño dios. No está signado por un destino cabalístico superior al de quienes ejercen otros menesteres y oficios. A menudo expresé que el mejor poeta es el hombre que nos entrega el pan de cada día: el panadero más próximo, que no se cree dios. El cumple su majestuosa y humilde faena de amasar, meter al horno, dorar y entregar el pan de cada día, con una obligación comunitaria. Y si el poeta llega a alcanzar esa sencilla conciencia, podrá también la sencilla conciencia convertirse en parte de una colosal artesanía, de una construcción simple o complicada, que es la construcción de la sociedad, la transformación de las condiciones que rodean al hombre, la entrega de la mercadería: pan, verdad, vino, sueños. Si el poeta se incorpora a esa nunca gastada lucha por consignar cada uno en manos de los otros su ración de compromiso, su dedicación y su ternura al trabajo común de cada día y de todos los hombres, el poeta tomará parte en el sudor, en el pan, en el vino, en el sueño de la humanidad entera. Sólo por ese camino inalienable de ser hombres comunes llegaremos a restituirle a la poesía al anchuroso espacio que le van recortando en cada época, que le vamos recortando en cada época nosotros mismos. [..] Pronunciado por Pablo Neruda con ocasión de la entrega del Premio Nobel de Literatura.

462 15 Reply
Fabrizio Frosini 16 November 2015

poema XIV,1924 Juegas todos los días con la luz del universo. Sutil visitadora, llegas en la flor y en el agua. Eres más que esta blanca cabecita que aprieto como un racimo entre mis manos cada día. A nadie te pareces desde que yo te amo. Déjame tenderte entre guirnaldas amarillas. Quién escribe tu nombre con letras de humo entre las estrellas del sur? Ah déjame recordarte cómo eras entonces, cuando aún no existías. De pronto el viento aúlla y golpea mi ventana cerrada. El cielo es una red cuajada de peces sombríos. Aquí vienen a dar todos los vientos, todos. Se desviste la lluvia. Pasan huyendo los pájaros. El viento. El viento. Yo sólo puedo luchar contra la fuerza de los hombres. El temporal arremolina hojas oscuras y suelta todas las barcas que anoche amarraron al cielo. Tú estás aquí. Ah tú no huyes. Tú me responderás hasta el último grito. Ovíllate a mi lado como si tuvieras miedo. Sin embargo alguna vez corrió una sombra extraña por tus ojos. Ahora, ahora también, pequeña, me traes madreselvas, y tienes hasta los senos perfumados. Mientras el viento triste galopa matando mariposas yo te amo, y mi alegría muerde tu boca de ciruela. Cuanto te habrá dolido acostumbrarte a mí, a mi alma sola y salvaje, a mi nombre que todos ahuyentan. Hemos visto arder tantas veces el lucero besándonos los ojos y sobre nuestras cabezas destorcerse los crepúsculos en abanicos girantes. Mis palabras llovieron sobre ti acariciándote. Amé desde hace tiempo tu cuerpo de nácar soleado. Hasta te creo dueña del universo. Te traeré de las montañas flores alegres, copihues, avellanas oscuras, y cestas silvestres de besos. Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.

383 16 Reply
Deez Nuts 07 February 2016

how many people read poetry just to read poetry? honestly its not very entertaining

43 270 Reply
Deez Nuts 07 February 2016

me no like poetry me like musik

37 256 Reply
Ryan Walker 28 August 2012

Pablo Neruda was one of the first people to use surrealism extensively in his poetry. It added a sense of supernatural phenomena, as reality was overflowing over the top to this new world which he could manipulate. Burial in the East, and Carnal Apple are among my favourites, and each portray a realistic event in a surreal fashion. Pablo Neruda is among, if not the Seminal Latin American writer. I would strongly encourage people who wish to read Neruda to buy a bilingual copy of his book, Spanish is truly a beautiful language.

162 93 Reply
Marina Paic 10 April 2023

One of the grestest poets of all times

2 0 Reply
ROSE MWANGANGI 24 January 2023

my best poet of all times

3 0 Reply
Sylvia Frances Chan 27 August 2022

CONGRATULATIONS with the POEM HUNTER's choice of The Quote Of The Day. I put my comment here, there is no other space else.5 Stars TOP Score.

4 0 Reply
MONISHA 25 May 2022

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4 2 Reply
Kathy Jiménez 25 April 2022

Pablo Neruda, alguien a quien le debo mucho por sus poemas románticos, un buen poeta

5 1 Reply

Pablo Neruda Quotes

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.

“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.”

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

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

“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.”

“As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”

“so I wait for you like a lonely house till you will see me again and live in me. Till then my windows ache.”

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”

“I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

“Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us”

“Laughter is the language of the soul.”

“You are like nobody since I love you.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Only do not forget, if I wake up crying its only because in my dream Im a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands....”

“my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping but I shall go on living.”

“And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.”

“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, thats certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

“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.”

“It was at that age that poetry came in search of me.”

“Love! Love until the night collapses!”

“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.”

“It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

“In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?”

“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.”

“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.”

“While Im writing, Im far away; and when I come back, Ive gone.”

“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.”

“Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”

“Love is the mystery of water and a star.”

“Give me silence, water, hope Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes?”

“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”

“Give me your hand out of the depths sown by your sorrows.”

“Bitter love, a violet with its 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?”

“I want to see thirst In the syllables, Tough fire In the sound; Feel through the dark For the scream.”

“My soul is an empty carousel at sunset.”

“Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying...and every day on the balcony of the sea wings open fire is born and everything is blue again like morning.”

“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.”

“Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.”

“And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”

“Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.”

“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.”

“About me, nothing worse they will tell you, my love, than what I told you ”

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