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 love her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Thought 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 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.
Pablo Neruda (1904 – 73), trs from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin
