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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Neruda-ness

For a few days now, it feels like the moment is right there, a few inches away and I am forever just out of reach. The saturation, the wonderful jolt of ...thought, before I begin to type.

I wrote something a long time ago, a letter of lost love and much too many tears, and today, like all the other days, just out of reach of the moment, as I re-read an old Neruda favourite, I decided that this
needs to be said here. And now. Because if you haven't read Neruda and felt like your soul was bruised and wandered the corridors in search of a hug, well then you havent really loved and lost. 


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



I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.


Maybe January light will consume 
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm



In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood. 


pablo neruda


Also, see the entire two (beautiful) paragraphs on the Poem of the Week Page. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recommend Fernendo Pessoa.

Spaax said...

Piper - he seems like an incredible poet, but the translations I found were not very ... moving.
Do you recommend any specific poems, websites from which to read his work?

Also - re Robb Stark - Believe me, this character hes almost killed is much ... more than Robb.

:( But I dont know if I should spoil SOIAF for you: sometimes the cat comes back. And theres hope.
Can't remember if its book 4/5 in which this hope-giving thing happens.

Only reason why I'll buy book 7 :)

Anonymous said...

I think that, much like Neruda, Pessoa is a phase poet. By that I mean that you can only enjoy him through certain phases of your life. I could never appreciate Neruda until last year, for instance. :-)

Yeah, I do recall he had started resurrecting characters towards the end of Book 3. Another reason why I stopped reading - purely a matter of personal taste, but if you are going to kill off characters, then at least let them stay dead. The resurrections just felt too much like a cop out.

In any event, this is one Pessoa poem I particularly like, during a phase:

Follow your destiny,
Water your plants,
Love your roses.
The rest is shadow
Of unknown trees.

Reality is always
More or less
Than what we want.
Only we are always
Equal to ourselves.

It's good to live alone,
And noble and great
Always to live simply.
Leave pain on the altar
As an offering to the gods.

See life from a distance.
Never question it.
There's nothing it can
Tell you. The answer
Lies beyond the Gods.

But quietly imitate
Olympus in your heart.
The gods are gods
Because they don't think
About what they are.

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