Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair

by Pablo Neruda

You Look like a world lying in surrender

To survive myself I forged you like a weapon, like an arrow in my bow , a stone in my sling.

But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.

and things that hide in you come out again so that a blue and pallid people, your newly born, takes nourishment.

In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them as you desire, and you send it where you will.

and your silence hunts my afflicted hours;

Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens

So that you will hear me my words sometimes grow thin as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy

You fill everything, you fill everything.

to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

In your eyes the flames of twilight fought on.

White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul.

I remembered you with my soul clenched in the sadness of mine that you know

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?

ah, I can say nothing! You were made of everything.

Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.

I go so far as to think that you own the universe.

As all things are filled with my soul you emerge from the things, filled with my soul. You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream, and you are like the word Melancholy

And let me talk to you with your silence that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring. You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations. Your silence is that of a star , as remote and candid.

One word then, one smile, is enough.

My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.

And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire.

I love what I do not have. You are so far.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her .

There were thirst and hunger , and you were the fruit.