PoemThe Saddest Poem
Author / PoetPablo Neruda

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
12 Jul 1904 - 23 Sep 1973
Region: South America
Period: Modernist
Movement: Modernism, Surrealism
Awards: International Peace Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, Stalin Peace Prize

more poems by Pablo Neruda

Poem NameTopic
There Where The Waves ShatterRocks
PotterLove, Potter, River
The Eighth Of SeptemberEarth, September
Leave Me A Place UndergroundAlone, Labyrinth, Survive
Here I Love YouLove, Soul
The Old Women Of The OceanAlone, Ocean, Sea
The Men
Don’T Go Far Off
Your Laughter
A Dog Has Died

all poems by Pablo Neruda

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