Famous Poets & Their Best Poems

Given name: Pablo
Family name: Neruda
Birth date: 12 July 1904
Death date: 23 September 1973
Country: Parral, Chile
Language: Spanish

Pablo Neruda, whose real name is Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was born on 12 July, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile. His father was a railway employeé and his mother, who died shortly after his birth, a teacher. Some years later his father, who had then moved to the town of Temuco, remarried doña Trinidad Candia Malverde. The poet spent his childhood and youth in Temuco, where he also got to know Gabriela Mistral, head of the girls' secondary school, who took a liking to him. At the early age of thirteen he began to contribute some articles to the daily "La Mañana", among them, Entusiasmo y Perseverancia - his first publication - and his first poem. In 1920, he became a contributor to the literary journal "Selva Austral" under the pen name of Pablo Neruda, which he adopted in memory of the Czechoslovak poet Jan Neruda (1834-1891). Some of the poems Neruda wrote at that time are to be found in his first published book: Crepusculario (1923). The following year saw the publication of Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada, one of his best-known and most translated works. Alongside his literary activities, Neruda studied French and pedagogy at the University of Chile in Santiago.

Between 1927 and 1935, the government put him in charge of a number of honorary consulships, which took him to Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Madrid. His poetic production during that difficult period included, among other works, the collection of esoteric surrealistic poems, Residencia en la tierra (1933), which marked his literary breakthrough.

The Spanish Civil War and the murder of Garcia Lorca, whom Neruda knew, affected him strongly and made him join the Republican movement, first in Spain, and later in France, where he started working on his collection of poems España en el Corazon (1937). The same year he returned to his native country, to which he had been recalled, and his poetry during the following period was characterised by an orientation towards political and social matters. 'España en el Corazon' had a great impact by virtue of its being printed in the middle of the front during the civil war.

In 1939, Neruda was appointed consul for the Spanish emigration, residing in Paris, and, shortly afterwards, Consul General in Mexico, where he rewrote his Canto General de Chile, transforming it into an epic poem about the whole South American continent, its nature, its people and its historical destiny. This work, entitled Canto General, was published in Mexico 1950, and also underground in Chile. It consists of approximately 250 poems brought together into fifteen literary cycles and constitutes the central part of Neruda's production. Shortly after its publication, Canto General was translated into some ten languages. Nearly all these poems were created in a difficult situation, when Neruda was living abroad.

In 1943, Neruda returned to Chile, and in 1945 he was elected senator of the Republic, also joining the Communist Party of Chile. Due to his protests against President Gonzalez Videla's repressive policy against striking miners in 1947, he had to live underground in his own country for two years until he managed to leave in 1949. After living in different European countries he returned home in 1952. A great deal of what he published during that period bears the stamp of his political activities; one example is Las Uvas y el Viento (1954), which can be regarded as the diary of Neruda's exile. In Odas elementales (1954- 1959) his message is expanded into a more extensive description of the world, where the objects of the hymns - things, events and relations - are duly presented in alphabetic form.

Neruda's production is exceptionally extensive. For example, his Obras Completas, constantly republished, comprised 459 pages in 1951; in 1962 the number of pages was 1,925, and in 1968 it amounted to 3,237, in two volumes. Among his works of the last few years can be mentioned Cien sonetos de amor (1959), which includes poems dedicated to his wife Matilde Urrutia, Memorial de Isla Negra, a poetic work of an autobiographic character in five volumes, published on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Arte de pajaros (1966), La Barcarola (1967), the play Fulgor y muerte de Joaquin Murieta (1967), Las manos del dia (1968), Fin del mundo (1969), Las piedras del cielo (1970), and La espada encendida.

Tonight I Can Write THe Saddest Lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

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.

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.

Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

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.

The Queen

I have named you queen.
There are taller than you, taller.
There are purer than you, purer.
There are lovelier than you, lovelier.
But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets
No one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
At the carpet of red gold
That you tread as you pass,
The nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I,
Only you and I, my love,
Listen to me.

If Your Eyes Were Not The Colour Of The Moon

If your eyes were not the colour of the moon,
Of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
If even heldin you did not move in agile grace like the air,
If you were not an amber week,

Not the yellow moment
When 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 would 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 Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

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.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

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 blood.

Your Laughter

Take my breath away, if you wish,
Take the air away, but
Do not take your laughter away from me.

Do not take the rose away,
The lanceflower that you pluck,
The water that suddenly
Bursts forth in your joy,
The sudden wave
Of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
With tired eyes
At times from having seen
The unchanging earth,
But when your laughter enters
It rises to the sky seeking me
And it opens for me all
The doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
Hour your laughter
Opens, and if suddenly
You see my blood staining
The stones of the street
Laugh, because your laughter
Will be for my hands
Like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in autumn,
Your laughter must raise
Its foamy cascade,
And in spring, love,
I want your laughter like
The flower I was waiting for,
The blue flower, the rose
Of my echoing country.

Laugh in the night,
In the day, on the moon,
Laugh at the twisted
Streets of the island,
Laugh at this clumsy
Boy who loves you,
But when I open
My eyes and close them,
When my steps go,
When my steps return,
Deny me bread, air,
Light, spring,
But never your laughter
For which I would die.

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?.

Love

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
Flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer
Remember your hands; how did your lips
Feel on mine?.

Because of you, I love the white statues
Drowsing in the parks, the white statues that
Have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice;
I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to
My vague memory of you. I live with pain
That is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
Make to me an irreperable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, like climbing
Vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to
Glimpse you in every window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of
Summer pain me; because of you, I again
Seek out the signs that precipitate desires:
Shooting stars, falling objects.

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.

Love, We´re Going Home Now

Love, we're going home now,
Where the vines clamber over the trellis:
Even before you, the summer will arrive,
On its honeysuckle feet, in your bedroom.

Our nomadic kisses wandered over all the world:
Armenia, dollop of disinterred honey:
Ceylon, green dove: and the YangTse with its old
Old patience, dividing the day from the night.

And now, dearest, we return, across the crackling sea
Like two blind birds to their wall,
To their nest in a distant spring:

Because love cannot always fly without resting,
Our lives return to the wall, to the rocks of the sea:
Our kisses head back home where they belong.

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.

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 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, ever green, 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.

The Fickle One

My eyes went away from me
Following a dark girl who went by.

She was made of black motherofpearl
Made of darkpurple grapes,
And she lashed my blood
With her tail of fire.

After them all I go.

A pale blonde went by
Like a golden plant
Swaying her gifts.
And my mouth went
Like a wave
Discharging on her breast
Lightningbolts of blood.

After them all I go.

But to you, without my moving,
Without seeing you, distant you,
Go my blood and my kisses,
My dark one and my fair one,
My broad one and my slender one,
My ugly one, my beauty,
Made of all the gold
And of all the silver,
Made of all the wheat
And of all the earth,
Made of all the water
Of sea waves,
Made for my arms
Made for my kisses,
Made for my soul.

Lovely One

Lovely one,
Just as on the cool stone
Of the spring, the water
Opens a wide flash of foam,
So is the smile of your face,
Lovely one.

Lovely one,
With delicate hands and slender feet
Like a silver pony,
Walking, flower of the world,
Thus I see you,
Lovely one.

Lovely one,
With a nest of copper entangled
On your head, a nest
The coloUr of dark honey
Where my heart burns and rests,
Lovely one.

Lovely one,
Your eyes are too big for your face,
Your eyes are too big for the earth.

There are countries, there are rivers,
In your eyes,
My country is your eyes,
I walk through them,
They light the world
Through which I walk,
Lovely one.

Lovely one,
Your breasts are like two loaves made
Of grainy earth and golden moon,
Lovely one.

Lovely one,
Your waist,
My arm shaped it like a river when
It flowed a thousand years through your sweet body,
Lovely one.

Lovely one,
There is nothing like your hips,
Perhaps earth has
In some hidden place
The curve and the fragrance of your body,
Perhaps in some place,
Lovely one.

Lovely one, my lovely one,
Your voice, your skin, your nails,
Lovely one, my lovely one,
Your being, your light, your shadow,
Lovely one,
All that is mine, lovely one,
All that is mine, my dear,
When you walk or rest,
When you sing or sleep,
When you suffer or dream,
Always,
When you are near or far,
Always,
You are mine, my lovely one,
Always.

Naked, You Are As

Naked, you are simple as one of your hands,
Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round:
You have moonlines, applepathways:
Naked, you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

Naked, you are blue as the 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 tiny as one of 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 of chores:
Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.

Absence

I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.

My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.

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.

Drunk As Drunk On Turpentine

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made out of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowzy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

I Remember You As You Were

I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:
Grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
Towards which my deep longings migrated
And my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

If You Forget Me

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.

I Crave Your Mouth

I crave your mouth,
Your voice, your hair.
Silent, starving I prowl
Through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me,
Dawn disquiets me,
I search the liquid sound
Of your steps all day.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
For your hands the color of the wild grain,
I hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your loveliness,
The nose, sovereign of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
And I walk hungry, smelling the twilight
Looking for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barren wilderness.

Entrance Of The Rivers

Beloved of the rivers,beset
By azure water and transparent drops,
Like a tree of veins your spectre
Of dark goddess biting apples:
And then awakening naked
To be tattoed by the rivers,
And in the wet heights your head
Filled the world with new dew.

Water rose to your waist,
You are made of wellsprings
And lakes shone on your forehead.
From your sources of density you drew
Water like vital tears
And hauled the riverbeds to the sand
Across the planetary night,
Crossing rough, dilated stone,
Breaking down on the way
All the salt of geology,
Cutting through forests of compact walls
Dislodging the muscles of quartz.

Here I Love You

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
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 vessels
that 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 moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.