Pablo Neruda

Laureate Nobel Prize

1971

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 branch
Of the slow autumm at my window
If I touch
Near the fire
The impalpable ash
On the wrinkled body of the log.
Everything carries me to you,
As if everything that exists,
Aromas, light, metals,
Were litlle boats
that sail
Toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now if litlle by litlle you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you litle by litlle
If suddenly you forget me,
For I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long mad,
The winds of banners
That passes through life
And you decide
To leave at the shore
Of the heart where I have roots,
Remember
That one day, at that hour,
I shall lift my arms and roots,
Will set off to seek another land
But each day,
Each hour
You feel you are destined for me
With implacable sweetness,
If each day a flower
Climbs up to
Your lips to seek me
Oh my love, ah my own.
In me all that fine is repeated.
In me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
My love feels on your love, beloved,
And as long as you lived it will be in your arms
Without leaving me.

  

The Saddest Poem

 

Poem XX

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,

And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.

How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.

The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.

My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.

My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.

We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.

My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once

Belonged to my kisses.

Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.

Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,

My soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,

And this may be the last poem I write for her.

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