Pablo Neruda : The poet of saddest poems

Pablo Neruda alias Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto a nobel laureate of 1971, was born on 12 July, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile. His father did not like Neruda's interest in writing. But he loved to write and got encouragement from Gabriela Mistral another nobel laureate of Latin America, who headed the local girls' school. The second half of his pen name derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda, he was vary popular at Nerudas young age; first half Pablo came from Paul Verlaine. In the year of 1924 Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada ("Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair") was published. This made him well known not only Chile, but also in Latin America. This book was critically acclaimed and were translated into many languages. Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca were his friends. The Spanish Civil War and the murder of García Lorca affected him strongly. Most of his life he worked as ambassador of Chile in many countries. Neruda has written a lot. You can get them online. He died on September 23, 1973 at the age of 69 in Santiago, Chile. But a poet of love and sorrow can not die. He will live forever in the heart of lovers, because he gives them voice.

Some lines about love and sorrow And Hope and despair by Pablo Neruda:

Give me silence, water, hope.
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
Stick bodies to me like magnets.
Draw near to my veins and my mouth.
Speak through my words and my blood.

[from the height of Maccho Picchu]

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

[Clenched Soul]

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

[Enigmas]

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest lines tonight.
I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.
To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.

[From – Twenty Poems of Love]

Don't go far off, not even for a day
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

[I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair]

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

[I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You]

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

[If You Forget Me]

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.

[In My Sky At Twilight]

And now you are mine.Rest with your dream in my dream
love and pain and work should all sleep now.
the night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

[ Sonnet LXXI ]

If you love to read more, then go poemhunter.com . They have a good collection of poems of Neruda. If you love it or not please inform me by comment.