Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
by Pablo Neruda
30 popular highlights from this book
Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair:
“I wantTo do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
“Tonight I can write the saddest linesI loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
“I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
“It was at that agethat poetry came in search of me.”
“Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.”
“And I watch my words from a long way off.They are more yours than mine.They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”
“Every day you play with the light of the universe.”
“There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.”
“وفي عينيك الحزينتين يبدأ وطن الحلم.”
“Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.I love you still among these cold things.Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vesselsthat cross the sea towards no arrival.I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there. My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.I love what I do not have. You are so far.My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.But night comes and starts to sing to me.”
“How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.”
“sometimes i get up at dawn, and even my soul is wet.”
“مثل البحر، مثل الزمن. فيكِ غَرِقَ كل شيء!”
“كم هو قصيرٌ الحب، وكم هو طويلٌ النسيان”
“كنتُ أتذكّرك وروحي تضيقبهذا الحزن الذي تعرفين.أين كنتِ آنئذٍ؟بين أيّ أناس؟أيّة كلمات كنتِ تقولين؟لماذا يداهمُني كل هذا الحبعندما أشعر بالحزن، وأَشعرُ بكِ بعيدة؟”
“Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.”
“The morning is full of stormin the heart of summer.The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye,the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands.The numberless heart of the windbeating above our loving silence.Orchestral and divine, resounding among the treeslike a language full of wars and songs.”
“تعجبينني حين تصمتين وأنت كالبعيدة. وأنتِ كأنك تئنّين، فراشة ترفّّ. وتَسمعينني من بعيد، وصوتي لا يصل إليكِ.دعيني أصمت مع صمتك.”
“نحن، اللذَيْن كنّا آنذاك، لم نعد كما كُنّا”
“Tonight I Can WriteTonight 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 armsmy soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.Though this be the last pain that she makes me sufferand these the last verses that I write for her.”
“بين الشفتين والصوت، شيءٌ يُحتَضر.”
“هنا الوحدة حيث تغيبين.”
“Entre los labios y la voz, algo se va muriendo.Algo con alas de pájaro, algo de angustia y de olvido”
“I remembered you with my soul clenched”
“The birds of night peck at the first starsthat flash like my soul when I love you.”
“أُحِبُّ ما ليس عندي. كم أنتِ بعيدة.”
“أنا اليائسُ، الكلمةُ بلا أصداء،الذي فقد كل شيء، وكان لديه كل شيء.”
“لأنّي في ليالٍ مثل هذه أخذتها بين ذراعيّ،روحي ليست راضيةً بأنّي أضعتُها.”
“أستطيع أن أكتب الأشعار الأكثر حزناً هذه الليلة.”
“Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.”
