Pablo Neruda

“Love is a clash of lightnings”

“I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you willdo me irreparable harm. Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.”

“Dónde está el niño que yo fui, sigue dentro de mí o se fue?Sabe que no lo quise nuncay que tampoco me quería?Por qué anduvimos tanto tiempo creciendo para separarnos?Por qué no morimos los dos cuando mi infancia se murió?Y si el alma se me cayópor qué me sigue el esqueleto?”

“I am not jealousof what came before me.Come with a manon your shoulders,come with a hundred men in your hair,come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,come like a riverfull of drowned menwhich flows down to the wild sea,to the eternal surf, to Time!Bring them allto where I am waiting for you;we shall always be alone,we shall always be you and Ialone on earth,to start our life!”

“It so happens I am sick of being a man.And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie housesdried up, waterproof, like a swan made of feltsteering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nailsand my hair and my shadow.It so happens I am sick of being a man.Still it would be marvelousto terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.It would be greatto go through the streets with a green knifeletting out yells until I died of the cold.I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,taking in and thinking, eating every day.I don't want so much misery.I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,half frozen, dying of grief.That's why Monday, when it sees me comingwith my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestineshanging over the doors of houses that I hate,and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,there are mirrorsthat ought to have wept from shame and terror,there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,my rage, forgetting everything,I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:underwear, towels and shirts from which slowdirty tears are falling”

“Like a jar you housed infinite tendernessAnd the infinite tenderness shattered you like a jar.”

“Un seul mot, usé, mais qui brille comme une vieille pièce de monnaie: merci!”

“Every day you play with the light of the universe.”

“Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep still.For once on the face of the earthlet's not speak in any language,let's stop for one second,and not move our arms so much.It would be an exotic momentwithout rush, without engines,we would all be togetherin a sudden strangeness.Fishermen in the cold seawould not harm whalesand the man gathering saltwould look at his hurt hands.Those who prepare green wars,wars with gas, wars with fire,victory with no survivors,would put on clean clothesand walk about with their brothersin the shade, doing nothing.What I want should not be confusedwith total inactivity.Life is what it is about;I want no truck with death.If we were not so single-mindedabout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death.Perhaps the earth can teach usas when everything seems deadand later proves to be alive.Now I'll count up to twelveand you keep quiet and I will go.”

“Hay algo más triste en el mundo que un tren inmóvil en la lluvia?”

“Por qué me sigue el esqueleto?Y quién salió a vivir por mícuando dormía o enfermaba?”

“Dónde van las cosas del sueño?Se van al sueño de otros?”

“Si he muerto y no me he dado cuentaA quién le pregunto ahora?”

“He vivido tanto que un díatendrán que olvidarme por fuerza.”

“Dónde está el niño que yo fui,Sigue adentro de mí o se fue?Sabe que no lo quise nuncaY que tampoco me quería?Por qué anduvimos tanto tiempoCreciendo para separarnos?Por qué no morimos los dosCuándo mi infancia se murió?Y si el alma se me cayóPor qué me sigue el esqueleto?”

“A quién le puedo preguntarQué vine a hacer en este mundo?Por qué me muevo sin querer, Por qué no puedo estar inmóvil?Por qué voy rodando sin ruedas,Volando sin alas ni plumas?Y qué me dio por trasmigrarSi viven en Chile mis huesos?”

“Tonight I can write the saddest linesI loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

“Sonnet LXXXI And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping ember. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go, we will go together, over the waters of time. No one else will travel through the shadows with me, only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon. Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny. Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.”

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

“They can cut all the flowers, but they can't stop the spring...”

“There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.”

“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.”

“White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soulYou live again in time, slender and silent.”

“The birds of night peck at the first starsthat flash like my soul when I love you.”

“You keep only darkness, my distant female,from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.”

“Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.”

“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 vesselsthat 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 morning is full of stormin 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 windbeating above our loving silence.Orchestral and divine, resounding among the treeslike a language full of wars and songs.”

“Oh to follow the road that leads away from everything,without anguish, death, winter waiting along itwith their eyes open through the dew.”

“Hay un cierto placer en la locura, que solo el loco conoce.”

“When I sleep every night,what am I called or not called?And when I wake, who am Iif I was not I while I slept?”

“Te garantizo que habrá épocas difíciles y te garantizo que en algún momento uno de los dos o los dos querremos dejarlo todo, pero también te garantizo que si no te pido que seas mío me arrepentiré durante el resto de mi vida porque sé en lo más profundo de mi ser que estás hecho para mí.”

“When I see the sea againhas the sea seen me or hasn’t it seen me?Why the waves ask meThe same that I ask them?And why do they hit the rockWith such a futile enthusiasm?Don’t they get tired of repeatingtheir declaration to the sand?”

“SAUDADESAUDADE...-Que será...yo no sé...lo he buscadoen unos diccionarios empolvados y antiguosy en otros libros que no han dado el significadode esta dulce palabra de perfiles ambiguos.Dicen que azules son las montañas como ella,que en ella se obscurecen los amores lejanos,y un nobre y buen amigo mío(y de las estrellas)la nombra en un temblor de trenzas y de manos.Y hoy en Eça de Queiroz sin mirar la adivino,su secreto se evade, su dulzura me obsedecomo una mariposa de cuerpo extraño y finosiempre lejos - tan lejos! - de mis tranquilas redes.Saudade...Oiga, vencido, sabe el significadode esta palabra blanca que como un pez se evade?No...Y me tiembla en la boca su temblor delicado...Saudade...”

“Si consideras largo y locoel viento de banderas que pasa por mi vida y te decides a dejarme a la orilla del corazón en que tengo raíces,piensa, que en ese día, a esa hora, levantaré los brazos y saldrán mis raíces a buscar otra tierra.”

“Dans ma patrie, on emprisonne les mineurset le soldat commande au juge.Mais j'aime, moi, jusqu'aux racinesde mon petit pays si froid.Si je devais mourir cent fois,c'est là que je voudrais mouriret si je devais naître cent foisc'est là aussi que je veux naître.”

“Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.”

“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.”

“te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.”

“No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacioo flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego: te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.Te amo como la planta que no florece y llevadentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores, y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpoel apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.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 pecha es mía,tan cerca que cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.”

“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.”

“You must know that I do not love and that I love you,because everything alive has its two sides;a word is one wing of silence,fire has its cold half.I love you in order to begin to love you,to start infinity againand never to stop loving you:that’s why I do not love you yet.I love you, and I do not love you, as if I heldkeys in my hand: to a future of joy-a wretched, muddled fate-My love has two lives, in order to love you.-Sonnet XLIV”

“Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiò todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.”

“el verbo es origeny vierte vida: es sangre,es la sangre que expresa su substanciay está dispuesto así su desarrollo”

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

“tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.”

“I need the sea because it teaches me”

“When everything seems to be set to show me off as intelligent, the fool I always keep hidden takes over all that I say.”

“The whole human earth was bleeding.Time, buildings, routes, rain,erase the constellation of the crime,the fact is, this small planethas been covered a thousand times by blood,war or vengeance, ambush or battle,people fell, they were devoured,and later oblivion wiped cleaneach square meter: sometimesa vague, dishonest monument,other times a clause in bronze,and still later, conversations, births,townships, and then oblivion.What arts we have for exterminationand what science to obliterate memory!What was bloody is covered with flowers.Once more, young men, ready yourselvesfor another chance to kill, to die again,and to scatter flowers over the blood.”

“In you the earth… Littlerose,roselet,at times,tiny and naked,it seemsas though you would fitin one of my hands,as though I’ll clasp you like thisand carry you to my mouth,butsuddenlymy feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:you have grown,your shoulders rise like two hills,your breasts wander over my breast,my arm scarcely manages to encircle the thinnew-moon line of your waist:in love you loosened yourself like sea water:I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyesand I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.”