Thursday, September 03, 2009

Pablo Neruda, Puedo escribir los versos más tristes, translated into English

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 around the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved him, and sometimes he loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held him in my arms.
I kissed him many times under the endless sky.

He loved me, sometimes I loved him too.
How could one not have loved his big sad eyes.

What does it matter that my love could not keep him.
The night is shattered and he is not with me.


My sight searches for him as though to go with him,
My heart looks for him, and he is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. So far.
The same night whitening the same trees

I no longer love him, that's certain, but how much I loved him.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch his hearing.

Another's. He is another's.
His voice. His bright body. His infinite eyes.

I no longer love him, that's certain, but maybe I love him.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held him in my arms
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost him.

Though this be the last pain that he makes me suffer
And these the last verses I write for him.

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