Poem XX



I can write the saddest verses tonight.

To write, for example:  “The night is starry,
and they shiver, blue, the heavenly bodies, far away.”

Night’s wind circles in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and at times she loved me too.

In nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She loved me, at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great steady eyes!

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don’t have her.  To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls in the soul as the dew in the grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her!
The night is starry and I am without her.

That is all. Far away someone sings.  Far away.
My soul is not content with having lost her.

As to near her my glance searches her out.
My heart looks for her, and I am without her.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, the rest of us, are no longer the same.

I don’t love her, it’s for sure, but how I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind to touch her hearing.

Of another.  She will be another.  As before of my kisses.
Her voice, her clear body.  Her infinite eyes.

I don’t love her, it’s for sure, but how I loved her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because in nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not content with having lost her.

Even though this may be the last sorrow that she cause me,
and these may be the last verses that I write her.


Pablo Neruda