top of page
Writer's pictureMeri Utkovska

TONIGHT I CAN WRITE by Pablo Neruda

Updated: Jul 16


man in a suit and tie
Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.


Write, for example, 'The night is starry

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'


The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.


Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.


Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.


She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.


Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.


To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.


What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is starry and she is not with me.


This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.


My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.


The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.


I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.


Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.


I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

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.


Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.


Source: Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair © Pablo Neruda



Black book cover with a red heart ilustrated on the front by Andy Warhol


Description

"The most popular work by Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet, and the subject of Pablo Larraín's acclaimed feature film Neruda starring Gael García Bernal

A Penguin Classic

When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition with an introduction by Cristina Garcia, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators."


 

This blog features several affiliate links, meaning that I'll earn a commission if you purchase through these links.


 

Comments

Rated 0 out of 5 stars.
No ratings yet

Add a rating
bottom of page