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 the 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.
- Pablo Neruda
artwork by john william godward
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Another beautiful Neruda poem. My favorite line is 'Love is so short, forgetting so long.'
