PABLO NERUDA

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PABLO NERUDA
(1904 1973)
Selected Poems
Love is so short, Forgetting is so long.
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His Life -

• Born in Parrel, Chile on July 12th 1904
• His full name is Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes
  Basoalto
• Started submitting poems to newspaper at age 13

- Became a published poet at 19 20 Love Poems
and a Song of Despair
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Life continued..

• 1927 he was given honorary consulship by the
  Chilean government after graduating from The
  University of Chile which allowed him to travel
  the world
• in 1937 he joined the Republican movements in
  France and Spain
• In 1945 he was elected senator of the Communist
  Party in Chile
• In 1949 he was forced to go into hiding
• In 1970 almost runs for President
• 1971 wins Nobel Prize for Literature
• 1973 Dies of prostate cancer

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F O R M
The Shape Of the poem
ClosedFORM Restricted line l e n g t h, meter,
rhyme and line groupings kinds of closed form
tercet, blank verse ballad
triplet sonnet People USE closed Form to
SHAPE and Polish MEANING
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F O R M
O PEN F ORM
Open-form poetry the open form eliminates the
restrictions of the closed form. Each open-form
poem is thus unique and unpredictable because it
avoids traditional patters of organization to
produce order. Poetry of this time was once
termed free verse to signify its liberation from
regular metrics and embrace of spoken rhythms.
But open-form poetry is not therefore
disorganized or chaotic. Open-form poets have
instead sought new ways to arrange words and
lines, new ways to express thoughts and
feelings, and new ways to order poetic
experience.
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write,
for example, The night is starry And the stars
are blue and shiver in the distance The night
wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I
can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and
sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like
this one I held her in my arms. I kissed her
again and again under the endless sky. She loved
me, sometimes I loved her too. How could one not
have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can
write the saddest lines. To think that I do not
have her. To feel that I have lost her .
Tonight I Can Write
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To hear the immense night, still more immense
without her. And the verse falls to the soul like
dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my
love could not keep her. The night is starry and
she is not with me. This is all. In the distance
someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is
not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight
tries to find her as though to bring her
closer. My heart looks for her, and she is not
with me. The same night whitening the same
trees. We, of that time, are no longer the
same. I no longer love her, thats certain, but
how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind
to touch her hearing. Anothers. She will be
anothers. As she was before my kisses. Her
voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
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I no longer love her, thats certain, but maybe I
love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so
long. Because through nights like this one I
held her in my arms My soul is not satisfied that
it has lost her. Though this be the last pain
that she makes me suffer And these the last
verses that I write for her.
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Not Alone the Albatross
Not with the spring are you awaited, Not in the
thirst of the corolla, Not in the honey-house
woven Fiber by fiber from vines and clusters, But
in the storm, the streaming Torrential dome over
the reefs, In the flaw rent by the dawn, And even
more, over the green pikes Of defiance, in the
ruinous Solitude of the marine mesa. Salt-betroth
ed, tempestuous doves, You turned your back on
every tainted wind From land to face the wetted
sea And in the wild transparency submerged Your
celestial geometry of flight. Each one sacred,
and not alone the one like a cyclonic drop, off
the branch Of the storm not alone the one who
nests
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On the slopes of turmoil, but Also the sea-gull
of shaped snow, The form of the guanay through
the spray, Silvered pack of platinum. When the
pelican fell like a tightened knot, Plummeting
its volume down, And when prophecy swooped On the
extended wings of the albatross And when the wind
of the petrel plunged Over eternity in
movement, Beyond the ancient cormorants, My heart
flowed into their cup.
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TRANSLATING POETRY
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OH EARTH, WAIT FOR METurn me oh suntowards my
native destiny,rain from the ancient
forest,return to me the fragrance and the
swordsthat fall from the sky,the solitary peace
of field and rock,the moisture at the margins of
the river,the scent of the larch,the wind,
alive like a heartbeating among the remote
flockof the great araucaria. Earth, return to
me your pure giftsthe towers of silence that
rosefrom the solemnity of their rootsI want to
return to being what I have not been,learn to
return from such depthsthat amongst all the
things of natureI could live or not live no
matterto be one more stone, the dark stone,the
pure stone that is carried by the river.
Return me, oh sun, to my wild destiny, rain of
the ancient wood. Bring me back its aroma, and
the swords that fall from the sky, the solitary
peace of pasture and rock, the damp at the
river-margins, the smell of the larch tree, the
wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded
restlessness of the towering araucaria. Earth,
give me back your pure gifts, the towers of
silence which rose from the solemnity of their
roots. I want to go back to being what I have not
been, and so learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things I could live or
not live, it does not matter to be one stone
more, that dark stone, the pure stone which the
river bears away.
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WORKS CITED

• http//www.mail-archive.com/sinister_at_majordomo.net
  /2001-month-02/msg00128.html
• www.amazon.com
• www.inkas.com
• www.wikipedia.com

• Turn, Nathaniel Selected Pomes by Pablo Neruda
  Paperback Publisher Mariner Books Bilingual
  edition (September 10, 1990) ISBN 0395544181

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