PABLO NERUDA
 

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.
 

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating planations,

shadow perforated

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.
 

And I, infinitesmal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

I felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke free on the open sky.
 
 
 
 
 

SADDEST POEM

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
 

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,

and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."
 

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
 

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.

I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
 

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.

How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
 

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.
 

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.

And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
 

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.

The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
 

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.

My soul is lost without her.
 

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.

My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
 

The same night that whitens the same trees.

We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
 

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.

My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
 

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once

belonged to my kisses.

Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
 

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.

Love is so short and oblivion so long.
 

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,

my soul is lost without her.
 

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,

and this may be the last poem I write for her.
 
 
 
 
 

CLENCHED SOUL

We have lost even this twilight.

No one saw us this evening hand in hand

while the blue night dropped on the world.
 

I have seen from my window

the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
 

Sometimes a piece of sun

burned like a coin in my hand.
 

I remembered you with my soul clenched

in that sadness of mine that you know.
 

Where were you then?

Who else was there?

Saying what?

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly

when I am sad and feel you are far away?
 

The book fell that always closed at twilight

and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
 

Always, always you recede through the evenings

toward the twilight erasing statues.