Neftalí Ricardo Reyes, better known as Pablo Neruda, was a master of the metaphorical magic of language. He was born in Parral, Chile in 1904. When he turned 20 years old he published “Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada” (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair). This is a collection of romantic poems that firmly established him as a poet. He also wrote surrealist poems, political manifestos and an autobiography. He joined the Communist Party and represented his country as a diplomat. Neruda won the Nobel Prize in 1971 and died in 1973 at the age of 69.
Here are two of his poems from “Twenty Love Poems” that I dared to translate:
I remember how you were
I remember how you were the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the peaceful heart.
The flames of dusk fought in your eyes
And the leaves fell in the waters of your soul.
Embraced around my arms like a twining vine
The leaves picked up your peaceful and slow voice
Bonfire of a trance in which my being burned.
Sweet hyacinth twisted over my soul.
I feel your eyes travel and autumn is distant:
grey beret, bird’s voice and heart of a house
where my deep yearnings migrated
and my happy kisses fell like embers.
Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your remembrance is a light.... smoke....a still pond!
Beyond your eyes the twilights burned
Dry leaves of autumn twirled in your soul.
Ah Vastness of Pines
Ah vastness of pines, rumor of breaking waves,
Slow play of lights, solitary bell,
Twilight falling over your eyes, doll
Terrestrial snail, in you the earth sings!
In you the rivers sing and my soul escapes in them
As you wish and wherever you want.
Signal my path in your bow of hope
And I will release in frenzy, my flock of arrows.
Around me I am looking at your waist of fog
And your silence besieges my persecuted hours
And it is you with your arms of transparent stone
Where my kisses anchor and my moist anxiety nests.
Ah your mysterious voice, that love dyes and folds
In the dying and resonant evening!
Like that, in deep hours over the fields, I have seen
The tassels bend in the mouth of the wind.
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