Poetry
Clenched Soul
Leaning Into The Afternoons
Like For You to Be Still
And now you're mine
If your eyes
I love you as...
Naked
Walking Around
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 meat 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.
Poetry
And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesmal 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 free on the open sky.
Saddest poem
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.
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, and 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 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 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. Like my kisses before her.
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 fo her.
Clenched Soul
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.
Leaning Into The Afternoons
Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.
There in the highest blaze my solitude legnthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.
I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that move like the sea near a lighthouse.
You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.
Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that beats on your marine eyes.
The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.
The night gallops away on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.
Like For You to Be Still
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.
As are things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Meloncholy.
I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.
And Let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.
I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it's not true.
And now you're mine
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 amber.
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.
If your eyes
If your eyes were not the color of the moon,
of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,
if you were not an amber week,
not the yellow moment
when the autumn climbs up through the vines;
if you were not that bread the fragrant moon
kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky,
Oh, my dearest, I could not love you so!
But when I hold you I hold everything that is--
sand, time, the tree of the rain,
everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all:
in your life I see everything that lives.
I love you as...
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 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.Naked
Naked, you are as simple as one of your hands, Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round: you have moon-lines, apple-pathways: naked, you are as slender as a naked grain of wheat. Naked, you are blue as a night in Cuba; you have vines and stars in your hair; naked, you are spacious and yellow as summer in a golden church. Naked, you are as tiny as one if your nails-- curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born and you withdraw to the underground world, as if down a long tunnel of clothing and chores: your clear light dims, gets dressed--drops its leaves-- and becomes a naked hand again.Walking Around
Tired of Being a Man by Pablo Neruda Walking around,..it happens that I am tired of being a man. It happens that I go into tailor shops and the movies All shriveled up; impenetrable like a felt swan Navigating on a water of origin and ash. The barber shops make me sob out loud. I want nothing but the repose either of stones or wool. I want to see no more establishments nor gardens Nor merchandise nor glasses nor elevators. It happens that Im tired of my feet and my nails and my hair And my shadow. It happens that I am tired of being a man. Just the same, it would be delicious to scare a notary With a cut lily Or knock a nun stone dead with a single blow of an ear. It would be beautiful to go through the streets With a green knife shouting until I died of cold. I do not want to go on being a root in the dark, hesitating, Stretched out shivering with dreams, Downward in the wet tripe of the earth, Soaking it up and thinking and eating every day. I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes. I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb, as a solitary tumble, As a cellar full of corpses stiff with cold and dying with pain. Monday burns like oil with me arriving with my jail face. And it howls in passing like a wounded wheel. And its footsteps toward night are filled with hot blood. And it shoves me along to certain corners and to certain damp houses Hospitals where the bones come out of the windows. To certain cobbler shops smelling of vinegar; To streets horrendous as crevices. There are birds the color of sulphur and horrible intestines Hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate. There are forgotten sets of teeth in coffee pots. There are mirrors which should have wept with shame and horror. There are umbrellas all over the place and poisons and navels. I stride along with calm; with eyes, with shoes, with fury, With forgetfulness. I pass and cross offices and stores full of orthopedic appliances And courtyards hung with clothes on wires Underpants, towels and shirts which weep slow, dirty tears.Inegrations
Inegrations
by Pablo Neruda
After everything, I will love you
as if it were always before,
as if after so much waiting,
not seeing you and you not coming,
you were breathing
close to me forever.
Close to me with your habits
with your color and your guitar
just as countries unite
in schoolroom lectures
and two regions become blurred
and there is a river near a river
and two volcanoes grow together.
Close to you is close to me
and your absence is far from everything
and the moon is the color of clay
in the night of quaking earth
when, in terror of the earth,
all the roots join together
and silence is heard ringing
with the music of fright.
Fear is also a street.
And among its terrifying stones
tenderness somehow is able to march
with four feet and four lips.
Since, without leaving the present
that is a fragile ring,
we touch the sand of yesterday
and on the sea, love reveals
a repeated fury.
----------
Whoever loved as we did? Let us hunt
for the ancient cinders of a heart that burned
and make our kisses fall one by one,
till that empty flower rises again.
Let us love the love that consumed its fruit and went
down, its image and its power, into the earth:
you and I are the light that endures,
its irrevocable delicate thorn.
Bring to that love, entombed by so much cold time,
by snow and spring, by oblivion and autumn,
the light of a new apple, light
of a freshness opened by a new wound,
like that ancient love that passes in silence
through an eternity of buried mouths.
by Pablo Neruda
----------
Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without your moving, silcing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,
without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.
In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:
since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we'll be.
by Pablo Neruda