Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair

by Pablo Neruda

In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them as you desire, and you send it where you will. Aim my road on your bow of hope and in a frenzy I will free my flock of arrows.

Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

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 toward no arrival.

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

I no longer love her , that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired. And the tenderness, light as water and as flour . And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!