Quotes by Pablo Neruda

In this part of the story I am the one whodies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.

Dont go far off, not even for a day,because I dont know how to say it - a day is longand I will be waiting for you, as inan empty station when the trains areparked off somewhere else, asleep.Dont leave me, even for an hour, because thenthe little drops of anguish will all run together,the smoke that roams looking for a home will driftinto me, choking my lost heart.Oh, may your silhouette never dissolveon the beach, may your eyelids never flutterinto the empty distance. Dont LEAVE me fora second, my dearest, because in that moment youllhave gone so far Ill wander mazilyover all the earth, asking, will youcome back? Will you leave me here, dying?

Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way

I am no longer in love with her, thats certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

And I, infinitesima­l being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, I felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.

I want you to knowone thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.

I have named you queen.There are taller than you, taller.There are purer than you, purer.There are lovelier than you, lovelier.But you are the queen.When you go through the streetsNo one recognizes you.No one sees your crystal crown, no one looksAt the carpet of red goldThat you tread as you pass,The nonexistent carpet.And when you appearAll the rivers soundIn my body, bellsShake the sky,And a hymn fills the world.Only you and I,Only you and I, my love,Listen to it.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

AmorSo many days, oh so many daysseeing you so tangible and so close,how do I pay, with what do I pay?The bloodthirsty springhas awakened in the woods.The foxes start from their earths,the serpents drink the dew,and I go with you in the leavesbetween the pines and the silence,asking myself how and whenI will have to pay for my luck.Of everything I have seen,its you I want to go on seeing:of everything Ive touched,its your flesh I want to go on touching.I love your orange laughter.I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.What am I to do, love, loved one?I dont know how others loveor how people loved in the past.I live, watching you, loving you.Being in love is my nature.You please me more each afternoon.Where is she? I keep on askingif your eyes disappear.How long shes taking! I think, and Im hurt.I feel poor, foolish and sad,and you arrive and you are lightningglancing off the peach trees.Thats why I love you and yet not why.There are so many reasons, and yet so few,for love has to be so,involving and general,particular and terrifying,joyful and grieving,flowering like the stars,and measureless as a kiss.Thats why I love you and yet not why.There are so many reasons, and yet so few,for love has to be so,involving and general,particular and terrifying,joyful and grieving,flowering like the stars,and measureless as a kiss.

Love! Love until the night collapses!

With a chaste heart With pure eyes I celebrate your beautyHolding the leash of bloodSo that it might leap out and trace your outline Where you lie down in my Ode As in a land of forests or in surfIn aromatic loam, or in sea musicBeautiful nudeEqually beautiful your feetArched by primeval tap of wind or soundYour ears, small shellsOf the splendid American seaYour breasts of level plentitudeFulfilled by living lightYour flying eyelids of wheatRevealing or enclosingThe two deep countries of your eyesThe line your shoulders have divided into pale regionsLoses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple Continues separating your beauty down into two columns ofBurnished goldFine alabasterTo sink into the two grapes of your feetWhere your twin symmetrical tree burns again and risesFlowering fireOpen chandelierA swelling fruit Over the pact of sea and earth From what materialsAgate?Quartz?Wheat?Did your body come together?Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills The cleavage of one petal Sweet fruits of a deep velvet Until alone remainedAstonished The fine and firm feminine form It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your bodyYet suffocate itselfSo much is clarity Taking its leave of youAs if you were on fire within The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two together in their sleep will defeat the darkness

Take bread away from me, if you wish,take air away, butdo not take from me your laughter.Do not take away the rose,the lance flower that you pluck,the water that suddenlybursts forth in joy,the sudden waveof silver born in you.My struggle is harsh and I come backwith eyes tiredat times from having seenthe unchanging earth,but when your laughter entersit rises to the sky seeking meand it opens for me allthe doors of life.My love, in the darkesthour your laughteropens, and if suddenlyyou see my blood stainingthe stones of the street,laugh, because your laughterwill be for my handslike a fresh sword.Next to the sea in the autumn,your laughter must raiseits foamy cascade,and in the spring, love,I want your laughter likethe flower I was waiting for,the blue flower, the roseof my echoing country.Laugh at the night,at the day, at the moon,laugh at the twistedstreets of the island,laugh at this clumsyfool who loves you,but when I openmy eyes and close them,when my steps go,when my steps return,deny me bread, air,light, spring,but never your laughter.

Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language!

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.

Donde termina el arco iris,en tu alma o en el horizonte?Where does the rainbow end,in your soul or on the horizon?

Y por que el sol es tan mal amigodel caminante en el desierto?Y por que el sol es tan simpaticoen el jardin del hospital?And why is the sun such a bad companionto the traveler in the desert?And why is the sun so congenial in the hospital garden?

Sólo con una ardiente paciencia conquistaremos la espléndida ciudad que dará luz, justicia y dignidad a todos los hombres. Así la poesía no habrá cantado en vano.

Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,paying me the attention I need,the attention requiredto make a vain person like me understandthat, being a dog, he was wasting time,but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,he’d keep on gazing at mewith a look that reserved for me aloneall his sweet and shaggy life,always near me, never troubling me,and asking nothing.