Tonight I can write
By Pablo Neruda
- 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 she makes me suffer
- and these the last verses that I write for her.
translated by W. S. Merwin