Thread: Pablo Neruda

My partner from sometime back read the most beautiful love poem to me one evening, so rich in imagery. I asked him "Who is this?!" "Pablo Neruda" he said. He had purchased "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair". Well, I was hooked.


Neurdo was a Chilean poet known for his romantic and erotic love poems. Then later when he witnessed poverty in Chile and Spain, his intense introspection turned to political rhetoric. The latter, I'm not particularly fond of.


Here's a piece from one of his sonnets:


This beauty is soft...


This beauty is soft -- as if music and wood,
agate, cloth, wheat, peaches the light shines through
had made an ephemeral statue.

And now she sends her freshness out, against the waves.
The sea dabbles at those tanned feet, repeating
their shape, just imprinted in the sand.

And now she is the womanly fire of a rose,
the only bubble the sun and the sea contend against.
Oh, may nothing touch you but the chilly salt!
May not even love disturb that unbroken springtime!

Beautiful woman, echo of the endless foam,
may your statuesque hips in the water make
a new measure -- a swan, a lily --,
as you float your form through that eternal crystal.

According to the unquestionably reliable Wikipedia, the man was a Senator of Chile before he was exiled. I had heard of Neruda, but I had never really looked into him.

I did a little research, and I love this piece by him:

Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark.

I've learned something. Never knew he was a Senator but a Nobel Prize winner in literature and Poet Laureate. What you exampled is so rich. Yes? There's the erotic in this piece magaged so tasefully. Just beautiful! I took to the whole poem but especially liked:

Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages

What descriptions!

Thank you for sharing. Laurie

Doesn't it make you wish all politicians were this poetic? Politics might actually become enjoyable.

You can find all of his works here, and nearly all of them have this rich beauty that he must be infamous for:

Poems by Pablo Neruda

Thanks Nick. Aready in my Bookmarks. Some politians can't even spell. I think it was Bush...

I love Neruda. His words are so seunsual

"Love is a war of lightning"

amazing

Love is a war of lightning

sem, that is a powerful one. Glad to hear from another fan.

I didn't even realise what a treasure trove of poetry there was in this man! Of course, I had heard of him and knew he was a poet, but I had never thought to sought out his work. Incredibly glad I did, as I just can't get enough of the gentle love and the fierce politics of Pablo Neruda. Thanks for introducing me, SilverMoon!

You're welcome. So well put.

gentle love and the fierce politics of Pablo Neruda.

The man lets his love fly from his red beating heart. A true romantic.

Who wouldn't like him?

Danvok, you are quite poetic yourself!

Originally Posted by SilverMoon

Danvok, you are quite poetic yourself!

Haha. Thanks.

Here's my favorite Neurda:

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.
That I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this one, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not not have loved her great, still eyes?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel 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 the same trees.
We, we who were, are the no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that is certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her ear.

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 is certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting 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.

gagoots, difficult to choose a favorite line. But I love an ending with a POW! Laurie

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer,
and these the last verses that I write for her.