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Tonight I can write the saddest lines
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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.
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, and 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 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 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. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite 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 sould 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.
Pablo Neruda
Read poems about / on: sometimes, lost, wind, night, sky, pain, love, kiss, star, tree
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M V Ramana Moorthy (4/14/2008 12:30:00 AM)
Though interpretation of poetry can be subjective, Pablo Neruda's poem has two dimensions; one half dealing with emotions and the other with the frailty of human emotions vis-à-vis the social condition. The very title and the refrain 'Tonight I can write the saddest lines' are immediately interlaced with examples which sound ironic, nothing more blatantly than lines 2 and 3:
'Write for example, 'the night is shattered
And the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
Then with “I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too, ” we enter the first phase of the poem where the poet juxtaposes what he knows for certain with a nagging element of doubt. The attempt to create a poetic mood is suddenly reversed with “She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.” This also indicates that Neruda is not writing a usual love poem, but all this is linked to physical attributes like her beautiful eyes and on his part only a weakness which is described just in one line. It also implies that the persona wishes to shut out past memory and live in the present.
“To think that I do not have her, to feel that I have lost her” where he is referring to either physical absence as a loss of love or a feeling that he has lost her to another rival, her dissatisfaction and rejection, and his inability and unwillingness to reconcile himself to those facts.
“It is another night, another song
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.”
And then the vain pursuit through memory lane begins. His emotional search finds that it is “the same night and the same trees”__ but both the lovers are changed. Then comes the new refrain rather a realization that “I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.” Here the poem enters the second phase where the poet juxtaposes bare facts with lingering undercurrents of nostalgia. He finds it quite as charming but certainly less painful. Already he has outlived his anguish and is learning to live with life.
Once again with the reversal of this refrain the poem enters the final phase when he says:
“I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.”
Here there is the dawning of a new meaning for ‘love’ and in the next line he sums up the whole experience:
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long”
The last four lines of the poem reflect the poet’s triumph over his own suffering - the origin of his love and the source of his despair. Yes. It is still painful; but what follows is the wisdom that is born out of that agony. He has seen the last of his agony, and can declare confidently:
“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.”
A great poem!
This reminds me of Dostoyevsky who once said “To write well one has to suffer and then overcome the suffering.” A true artistic process that is delectably presented by Pablo Neruda.
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Thuraya Hamad (2/4/2008 3:32:00 PM)
' I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her'
you couldn't possibly be more beautiful Pablo
it's heartbreaking indeed to feel again the intensity of loss |
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