Tonight I Can Write

Genre: Poetry
Author: Pablo Neruda
Translator: C.S. Merwin
Source: "Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada" (Twenty Poems and a Song of Despair)
Year Published: 1924

Tonight I Can write

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 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, and 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.

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 shattered 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 searches for her as though to go to her.
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, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's 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.
____________________________________________________

This is a very sad poem of a man for his beloved. The poet here expresses his sorrow now that woman he loves will be getting married. Look at the 12th and 14th stanzas. They give us a hint there that the woman will now be leading a new life. A life without him.

The line "Love is so short, forgetting is so long" suggests that the persona doesn't seem to be satisfied with the time they had with one another. And that even if love between them has finally vanished, the memories of their moments together shall continue haunting him. Reminding him of a precious love he lost.

At the end, the persona then decides that the poem will be the last one dedicated to his beloved. And also, it shall be the last time he'll hurt because of her.

Thus, this makes the poem a highly recommended piece for those who are "emo" and those who still suffer the loss of a loved one but want to go on already.