Quotes by Pablo Neruda

Of so much moon were your hips to me,of all the sun your deep mouth and its delight,of so much burning light like honey in the shade

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,you look like a world, lying in surrender.My rough peasants body digs in youand makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flowsand weariness follows, and the infinite ache.

Como se reparten el sol en el naranjo las naranjas?How do the oranges divide up sunlight in the orange tree?

The word was born in the blood, grew in the dark body, beating, and took flight through the lips and the mouth. Farther away and nearer still, still it came from dead fathers and from wondering races, from lands which had turned to stone, lands weary of their poor tribes, for when grief took to the roads the people set out and arrived and married new land and water to grow their words again. And so this is the inheritance; this is the wavelength which connects us with dead men and the dawning of new beings not yet come to light.

I want to see the thirstinside the syllablesI want to touch the firein the sound:I want to feel the darknessof the cry. I wantwords as roughas virgin rocks.” - Verb.

Do you not hear the constant victory,in the human footraceof time, slow as fire,sure, and thick and Herculeanaccumulating its volume and adding its sad fiber?

If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my lifeAnd you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have rootsRememberThat on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my armsAnd my roots will set off to seek another land

Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?What primal night does Man touch with his senses?Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:Love is a war of lightning,and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,and a genital fire, transformed by delight,slips through the narrow channels of bloodto precipitate a nocturnal carnation,to be, and be nothing but light in the dark.

I love you like the plant that does not bloomand carries in itself, hidden, the light of those flowers,

Oh, beloved, and there is nothing but shadowswhere you accompany me in your dreamsand tell me the hour of light.

I know you exist not just because your eyes flyand give light to things like an open window

LXXIXWhen I die, I want your hands on my eyes.I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once moreLI want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the seas aroma that we loved together,to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.I want what I love to continue to live,and you whom I love and sang above everything else.to continue to flourish, full-flowered.So that you can reach everything my love directs you to. So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

I will die kissing your mad cold mouth,embracing the lost bouquet of your body,and searching for the light of your closed eyes

If suddenly you do not exist,if suddenly you no longer live,I shall live on.I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die.I shall live on.For where a man has no voice,there, my voice.Where blacks are beaten,I cannot be dead.When my brothers go to prisonI shall go with them.When victory,not my victory,but the great victory comes,even though I am mute I must speak;I shall see it come even though I am blind.No, forgive me.If you no longer live,if you, beloved, my love,if you have died,all the leaves will fall in my breast,it will rain on my soul night and day,the snow will burn my heart,I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, butI shall stay alive,because above all things you wanted me indomitable,and, my love, because you know that I am not only a manbut all mankind.

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 snow like dew to the pasture.

I remember you with my soul clenched in that sadness of mine that you know.

Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.

Die slowlyHe who becomes the slave of habit,who follows the same routes every day,who never changes pace,who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,who does not speak and does not experience,dies slowly.He or she who shuns passion,who prefers black on white,dotting ones it’s rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer,that turn a yawn into a smile,that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings,dies slowly.He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,who is unhappy at work,who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,to thus follow a dream,those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives,die slowly.He who does not travel, who does not read,who does not listen to music,who does not find grace in himself,she who does not find grace in herself,dies slowly.He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,who does not allow himself to be helped,who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops,dies slowly.He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesnt know, he or she who dont reply when they are asked something they do know,die slowly.Lets try and avoid death in small doses,reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing.Only a burning patience will leadto the attainment of a splendid happiness.

I loved you without knowing it, and I looked for your memory.In empty houses I entered with a lantern to steal your portrait

So that you will hear memy wordssometimes grow thinas the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.Necklace, drunken bellfor your hands smooth as grapes.And I watch my words from a long way off.They are more yours than mine.They climb on my old suffering like ivy.It climbs the same way on damp walls.You are to blame for this cruel sport.They are fleeing from my dark lair.You fill everything, you fill everything.Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,and they are more used to my sadness than you are.Now I want them to say what I want to say to youto make you hear as I want you to hear me.The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.You listen to other voices in my painful voice.Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.Love me, companion. Dont forsake me. Follow me.Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.But my words become stained with your love.You occupy everything, you occupy everything.I am making them into an endless necklacefor your white hands, smooth as grapes.