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6028d654-e1db-49e2-87fb-6ccd3ac7aa10

The document contains three poems by Pablo Neruda: 'Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines,' which reflects on lost love and longing; 'Ode To Clothes,' which explores the relationship between the speaker and their clothing as a metaphor for life and identity; and 'Fable Of The Mermaid And The Drunks,' which tells the story of a mermaid facing ridicule from drunken men before returning to the river. Each poem delves into themes of love, loss, and the human experience.

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23 views5 pages

6028d654-e1db-49e2-87fb-6ccd3ac7aa10

The document contains three poems by Pablo Neruda: 'Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines,' which reflects on lost love and longing; 'Ode To Clothes,' which explores the relationship between the speaker and their clothing as a metaphor for life and identity; and 'Fable Of The Mermaid And The Drunks,' which tells the story of a mermaid facing ridicule from drunken men before returning to the river. Each poem delves into themes of love, loss, and the human experience.

Uploaded by

iamratneswar003
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

By Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered


and the blue stars 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, and 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 shattered 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 searches for her as though to go to her.


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 tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.


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.

Ode To Clothes

Every morning you wait,


clothes, over a chair,
to fill yourself with
my vanity, my love,
my hope, my body.
Barely
risen from sleep,
I relinquish the water,
enter your sleeves,
my legs look for
the hollows of your legs,
and so embraced
by your indefatigable faithfulness
I rise, to tread the grass,
enter poetry,
consider through the windows,
the things,
the men, the women,
the deeds and the fights
go on forming me,
go on making me face things
working my hands,
opening my eyes,
using my mouth,
and so,
clothes,
I too go forming you,
extending your elbows,
snapping your threads,
and so your life expands
in the image of my life.
In the wind
you billow and snap
as if you were my soul,
at bad times
you cling
to my bones,
vacant, for the night,
darkness, sleep
populate with their phantoms
your wings and mine.
I wonder
if one day
a bullet
from the enemy
will leave you stained with my blood
and then
you will die with me
or one day
not quite
so dramatic
but simple,
you will fall ill,
clothes,
with me,
grow old
with me, with my body
and joined
we will enter
the earth.
Because of this
each day
I greet you
with reverence and then
you embrace me and I forget you,
because we are one
and we will go on
facing the wind, in the night,
the streets or the fight,
a single body,
one day, one day, some day, still.
Pablo Neruda

Fable Of The Mermaid And The Drunks


All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
She was a mermaid who had lost her way.
The insults flowed down her gleaming flesh.
Obscenities drowned her golden breasts.
Not knowing tears, she did not weep tears.
Not knowing clothes, she did not have clothes.
They blackened her with burnt corks and cigarette stubs,
and rolled around laughing on the tavern floor.
She did not speak because she had no speech.
Her eyes were the colour of distant love,
her twin arms were made of white topaz.
Her lips moved, silent, in a coral light,
and suddenly she went out by that door.
Entering the river she was cleaned,
shining like a white stone in the rain,
and without looking back she swam again
swam towards emptiness, swam towards death.
Pablo Neruda

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