Pablo Neruda

“I love you like the plant that does not bloomand carries in itself, hidden, the light of those flowers,”

“The days aren't discarded or collected, they are beesthat burned with sweetness or maddenedthe sting: the struggle continues,the journeys go and come between honey and pain.No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,or action, or silence, or honor:life is like a stone, a single motion,a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metalthat climbs or descends burning in your bones.”

“my beauty, flower by flower, star by star,wave by wave, love, I have counted your body.”

“Naked you are blue like the night in Cuba,you have vines and stars in your hair,”

“If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my lifeAnd you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have rootsRememberThat on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my armsAnd my roots will set off to seek another land”

“If suddenly you do not exist,if suddenly you no longer live,I shall live on.I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die.I shall live on.For where a man has no voice,there, my voice.Where blacks are beaten,I cannot be dead.When my brothers go to prisonI shall go with them.When victory,not my victory,but the great victory comes,even though I am mute I must speak;I shall see it come even though I am blind.No, forgive me.If you no longer live,if you, beloved, my love,if you have died,all the leaves will fall in my breast,it will rain on my soul night and day,the snow will burn my heart,I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, butI shall stay alive,because above all things you wanted me indomitable,and, my love, because you know that I am not only a manbut all mankind.”

“The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.”

“Sufre mas el que espera siempreque aquel que nunca espero a nadie?Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone?”

“Love! Love until the night collapses!”

“Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.”

“I love you in order to begin loving you,to start infinity againand never to stop loving you:that is why I do not love you yet.”

“I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty.”

“Take bread away from me, if you wish,take air away, butdo not take from me your laughter.Do not take away the rose,the lance flower that you pluck,the water that suddenlybursts forth in joy,the sudden waveof silver born in you.My struggle is harsh and I come backwith eyes tiredat times from having seenthe unchanging earth,but when your laughter entersit rises to the sky seeking meand it opens for me allthe doors of life.My love, in the darkesthour your laughteropens, and if suddenlyyou see my blood stainingthe stones of the street,laugh, because your laughterwill be for my handslike a fresh sword.Next to the sea in the autumn,your laughter must raiseits foamy cascade,and in the spring, love,I want your laughter likethe flower I was waiting for,the blue flower, the roseof my echoing country.Laugh at the night,at the day, at the moon,laugh at the twistedstreets of the island,laugh at this clumsyfool who loves you,but when I openmy eyes and close them,when my steps go,when my steps return,deny me bread, air,light, spring,but never your laughter.”

“So that you will hear memy wordssometimes grow thinas the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.Necklace, drunken bellfor your hands smooth as grapes.And I watch my words from a long way off.They are more yours than mine.They climb on my old suffering like ivy.It climbs the same way on damp walls.You are to blame for this cruel sport.They are fleeing from my dark lair.You fill everything, you fill everything.Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,and they are more used to my sadness than you are.Now I want them to say what I want to say to youto make you hear as I want you to hear me.The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.You listen to other voices in my painful voice.Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.But my words become stained with your love.You occupy everything, you occupy everything.I am making them into an endless necklacefor your white hands, smooth as grapes.”

“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?”

“Tonight I can write the saddest linesI loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

“Do tears not yet spilledwait in small lakes?Or are they invisible riversthat run toward sadness?”

“Como se reparten el sol en el naranjo las naranjas?How do the oranges divide up sunlight in the orange tree?”

“I want you to knowone 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.”

“Settle your perfect hips here and the bow of wet arrowsloosens into the night the petals that form your formlet your clay limbs climb the silence and its pale ladderrung by rung taking off with me in my dream.I can sense you scaling the shade tree that sings to the shadows.Dark is the world’s night without you my love,”