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Pablo Neruda : Winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature

Writer's picture: IvankaIvanka

Tonight I can write the saddest lines


Tonight I can write the saddest lines
Tonight I can write the saddest lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.


Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and 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 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 starry 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 tries to find her as though to bring her closer.

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. As she was before my kisses.

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.



Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche


Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.


Escribir: por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,

y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos."


El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.


Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.


En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.

La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.


Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.

Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.


Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.


Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.

Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.


Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.

La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.


Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.

Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.


Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.

Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.


La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.

Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.


Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.

Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.


De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.

Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.


Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.

Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.


Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,

mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.


Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,

y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.



Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 - 23 September 1973) better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician.

He was born in Parral, Chile. His father was a railway employee and his mother was a schoolteacher, who died two months after he was born.

He composed his first poems in the winter of 1914 and became known as a poet when he was 13 years old when he published his first work.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines
Tonight I can write the saddest lines

From 1918 to mid-1920, he published numerous poems.

In 1921 at the age of 16, Neruda moved to Santiago to study French at the Universidad de Chile.

Also, in 1923 his first volume of verse, Crepusculario (Book of Twilights) was published, followed the next year by Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and A Desperate Song).

Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime (Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Mexico City, etc.).


See you on Tuesday!

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