Pablo Neruda Poems

(via Roberto)

I was reading some of his poems. Here are a few.

Tell Me, Is The Rose Naked?

Tell me, is the rose naked
Or is that her only dress?.

Why do trees conceal
The splendor of their roots?.

Who hears the regrets
Of the thieving automobile?.

Is there anything in the world sadder
Than a train standing in the rain?.


The light wraps you in its mortal flame.

The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
Against the old propellers of the twilight
That revolves around you.

Speechless, my friend,
Alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
And filled with the lives of fire,
Pure heir of the ruined day.

A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night grow suddenly from your soul,
And the things that hide in you come out again
So that a blue and pallid people,
Your newly born, takes nourishment.

Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
Of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
Rise, lead and possess a creation
So rich in life that its flowers perish
And it is full of sadness.


I Hunt For A Sign Of You

I hunt for a sign of you in all the others,
In the rapid undulant river of women,
Braids, shyly sinking eyes,
Light step that slices, sailing through the foam.

Suddenly I think I can make out your nails,
Oblong, quick, nieces of a cherry:
Then it's your hair that passes by, and I think
I see your image, a bonfire, burning in the water.

I searched, but no one else had your rhythms,
Your light, the shady day you brought from the forest;
Nobody had your tiny ears.

You are whole, exact, and everything you are is one,
And so I go along, with you I float along, loving
A wide Mississippi toward a feminine sea.


Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
And 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 the nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her over and over again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I did love her too.
How could I not have loved her great 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 if 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 because it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is no longer with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We both of that time are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's true, but how much I have 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 voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s true, but maybe I do love her.
Love is so short and forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
My soul is not satisfied because it has lost her.

Though this is the last pain that she makes me suffer
And these the last verses I do write for her.


I'm going to add more tonight or tomorrow.

Much love and peace.