Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines – Pablo Neruda

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Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

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.

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.

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 void. 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 that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

He was twenty when he wrote this poem. It was published in the year 1924. Clearly this is a poem about grief associated afer the breakup of a love affair very early in life. And early stages too in the grief process emphasised by the statement my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. To not have the physical intimacy of the relationship in the first days of the breakup is shattered at night time. The night the time the loss is magnified – to hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

The intense pain of not having physical connection is overwhelming and this dominates the poem. I like the single line stanzas that allow the reader to spend time deliberating on the sad state of affairs. The monologue and the repetition give emphasis to his sad emotional state.

But there appears to me a searching question on what is love. Apart from the physical aspects on knowing her body and the sexual union in lines such as –

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.

Maybe he is looking at other aspects of her that connect with deeper meaning. Attributes such as integrity, compassion, personal goals, philosophy … aspects that could form a common bond beyond the physical.

This is the probably a sad reflection on a first love. At least the first more meaningful love relationship for he authored the poem at the age of twenty, so hopefully over time he had more success. His ‘Memoirs’ detail his relationships with many women. Although he extolled the beauty of woman in his love poetry his treatment of women was sadly lacking. But of course the product of the time he lived. His love sonnets were very much a tribute to his third wife Matilde Urrudia.

A Dog Has Died – Pablo Neruda

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A Dog Has Died

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

This is Neruda’s pet dog and the first thing to notice is that there is no naming of the dog other than dog. 
The emphasis is on the fact that he is Dog.

S1 … A straightforward statement that the dog has died and been buried.

S2 … Neruda will have similar fate. He reflects on the attributes that are commonly associated with a dog. Looking at the negative side of dog. Although Neruda has no believe in heaven his dog will be there and waiting for him in Dog Heaven.

S3 … his dog was not a close dog … rather distant like a star … there was no intimacy of touch that is common with a dog as pet

S4 … it looks as though the Dog gazes at the pathetic creature that is Neruda … he is there out of duty but what a waste of dog time … never troubles his owner

S5 … and when Neruda takes dog for a walk along the coast at Isla Negro (at the cottage in Chile where Neruda lived), Neruda is jealous at the natural happy full of life spirit that Dog shows on the walk … and I love the line full of the voltage of the sea’s movement … perhaps Neruda, in contrast is depressed, the poem was written near the end of his life.

S6 … no goodbyes necessary, a honest relationship

S7 … In line with the first stanza the Dog is buried and gone and that’s the end. As though a full stop on grief. I think he loved his dog very much despite wallowing in self-pity and using such a degrading tone.

This is certainly a different poem than one usually associates with Neruda. Most people would associate Neruda with his famous love sonnets.