Quotes by Pablo Neruda

Sufre mas el que espera siempreque aquel que nunca espero a nadie?Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone?

Por que en las epocas oscurasse escribe con tinta invisible?Why in the darkest agesdo they write with invisible ink?

I was born anew, owner of my own darkness.

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad netstowards your oceanic eyes.There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,its arms turning like a drowning mans.I send out red signals across your absent eyesthat smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.You keep only darkness, my distant female,from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad netsto that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.The birds of night peck at the first starsthat flash like my soul when I love you.The night gallops on its shadowy mareshedding blue tassels over the land.

At night I dream that you and I are two plantsthat grew together, roots entwined,and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,since we are made of earth and rain.

To harden the earththe rocks took charge:instantlythey grew wings:the rocksthat soared:the survivorsflew upthe lightning bolt,screamed in the night,a watermark,a violet sword,a meteor.The succulentskyhad not only clouds,not only space smelling of oxygen,but an earthly stoneflashing here and therechanged into a dove,changed into a bell,into immensity, into a piercingwind:into a phosphorescent arrow,into salt of the sky.

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived in search of me. I dont know, I dont know where it came from, from winter or a river. I dont know how or when, no they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. 

Fear envelops bones like new skin,envelops blood with night’s skin,the earth moves beneath the soles of the feet -it is not your hair but the terror in your head,like long hair made of vertical nails,and what you see are not shattered streets,but rather, within you, your own crushed walls,your frustrated infinity, again the city comescrashing down: in your silence, only water’s threatis heard, and in the waterdrowned horses gallop through your death.

Every day you play with the light of the universe.

Do tears not yet spilledwait in small lakes?Or are they invisible riversthat run toward sadness?

It’s well known that he who returns never left

Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that formsthe fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweedsfilled your body with joy, and your luminous eyesand your mouth that has the smile of the water.A black yearning sun is braided into the strandsof your black mane, when you stretch your arms.You play with the sun as with a little brookand it leaves two dark pools in your eyes.

Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.

and everything burned in blue, everything a star

And so this letter endswith no sadness:my feet are firm upon the earth,my hand writes this letter on the road,and in the midst of life I shall bealwaysbeside the friend, facing the enemy,with your name on my mouthand a kiss that neverbroke away from yours.

In one kiss, youll know all I havent said.

Sonnet LXXXI And now youre mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping ember. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go, we will go together, over the waters of time. No one else will travel through the shadows with me, only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon. Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny. Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all timetables.

Your eyes have the colour of the moon,

I do not love you except because I love you;I go from loving to not loving you,From waiting to not waiting for youMy heart moves from cold to fire.