IT WAS STEAMY HOT WITH FANS SWIRLING ABOVE,
THERE WAS NO TIME FOR THE MILITIA OR EVEN
TO MAKE LOVE, JUST CONTINUE WITH THE
PIPELINE DAY AFTER DAY, FROM ONE CLEARING
TO THE NEXT ACROSS VAST TRACTS OF LAND,
DUST TO DUST TAKEN OUT NOW GRAINS OF SAND,
LOCAL LABOUR BROWN AS TEAK DOES NOT
FLINCH WHEN I START TO SPEAK - JUST
WATCHFUL AND DOWNTRODDEN BUT WILLING TO
LEARN, MAYBE IN THE NEXT LIFE IT MIGHT BE
MY TURN TO FACE HUMILITY UNDER JUNGLE SKIES,
WHEN IT'S ALL OVER , WORK IS FINISHED AND CONVERSATION DIES;
'ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY WHERE THE FLYING FISHES PLAY,
THE DAWN COMES UP LIKE THUNDER FROM CHINA ACROSS THE BAY.'

Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp tightly
like a cornucopia, every day, between my hands ...

Keywords/Tags: Neruda, translation, Spanish, day, play, infinity, infinity's, rays, exquisite, visitor, flowers, water, head, clasp, hands



More Pablo Neruda translations ...


These are English translations of Spanish poems by Pablo Neruda. There are also English translations of Pablo Neruda quotes and epigrams.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and is generally considered to be one of the world's best poets. Indeed, he was called "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language" by Gabriel García Márquez.

Neruda always wrote in green ink, the color of esperanza (hope).



Love! Love until the night implodes!—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



You can crop all the flowers but you cannot detain spring.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



As if you were set on fire from within,
the moon whitens your skin.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



The Book of Questions
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Is the rose ****
or is that just how she dresses?

Why do trees conceal
their spectacular roots?

Who hears the confession
of the getaway car?

Is there anything sadder
than a train standing motionless in the rain?



While nothing can save us from death,
still love can redeem each breath.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



In El Salvador, Death
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Death still surveils El Salvador.
The blood of murdered peasants has never clotted;
time cannot congeal it,
nor does the rain erase it from the roads.
Fifteen thousand were machine-gunned dead
by Martinez, the murderer.
To this day the coppery taste of blood still flavors
the land, bread and wine of El Salvador.



Please understand that when I awaken weeping
it's because I dreamed I was a lost child
searching the leaf-heaps for your hands in the darkness.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Love Sonnet LXVI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates between ice and fire.

I love you only because you’re the one I love;
I hate you deeply, but hatred makes me implore you all the more
so that in my inconstancy
I do not see you, but love you blindly.

Perhaps January’s frigid light
will consume my heart with its cruel rays,
robbing me of the key to contentment.

In this tragic plot, I ****** myself
and I will die loveless because I love you,
because I love you, my Love, in fire and in blood.



I'm no longer in love with her, that's certain ...
yet perhaps I love her still.
Love is so short, forgetting so long!
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.

I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your ******* like almonds, whole.

I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.

I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.



I own my own darkness, alone.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I alone own my darkness.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth's incandescent white flame;
I love you like phantoms embraced in the dark ...
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed.

I love you like bushes that refuse to bloom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now, thanks to your love, an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body's odors.

I love you without knowing—how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care;
I love you this way because I know no other.

Here, where "I" no longer exists ... so it seems ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.



I like for you to be still: it’s as if you were absent;
then you hear me from far away, yet my voice fails to touch you.
—Pablo Neruda “Me Gustas Cuando Callas” translation by Michael R. Burch



If You Forget Me
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I need you to know one thing ...

You know
how it goes:
if I gaze up at the glowing moon,
if observe the blazing autumn’s reddening branches from my window,
if I touch the impalpable ash of the charred log’s wrinkled body ...
everything returns me to you,
as if everything that exists
—all aromas, sights, solids—
were small boats
sailing toward those isles of yours that await me.

However ...
if little by little you stop loving me
then I shall stop loving you, little by little.

And if you suddenly
forget me,
do not bother to investigate,
for I shall have immediately
forgotten you
also.

If you think my love strange and mad—
this whirlwind of streaming banners
gusting through me,
so that you elect to leave me at the shore
where my heart lacks roots,
just remember that, on that very day,
at that very hour,
I shall raise my arms
and my roots will sail off
to find some more favorable land.

But
if each day
and every hour,
you feel destined to be with me,
if you greet me with implacable sweetness,
and if each day
and every hour
flowers blossom on your lips to entice me, ...
then ah my love,
oh my only, my own,
all that fire will be reinfernoed in me
and nothing within me will be extinguished or forgotten;
my love will feed on your love, my beloved,
and as long as you live it will be me in your arms ...
as long as you never leave mine.



Laughter is the soul's language.—Pablo Neruda



Sonnet XLV
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't wander far away, not even for a day, because—
how can I explain? A day is too long ...
and I’ll be waiting for you, like a man in an empty station
where the trains all stand motionless.

Don't leave me, my dear, not even for an hour, because—
then despair’s raindrops will all run blurrily together,
and the smoke that drifts lazily in search of a home
will descend hazily on me, suffocating my heart.

Darling, may your lovely silhouette never dissolve in the surf;
may your lashes never flutter at an indecipherable distance.
Please don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because then you'll have gone far too far
and I'll wander aimlessly, amazed, asking all the earth:
Will she ever return? Will she spurn me, dying?



I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.—Pablo Neruda



My Dog Died
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My dog died;
so I buried him in the backyard garden
next to some rusted machine.

One day I'll rejoin him, over there,
but for now he's gone
with his shaggy mane, his crude manners and his cold, clammy nose,
while I, the atheist who never believed
in any heaven for human beings,
now believe in a paradise I'm unfit to enter.

Yes, I somehow now believe in a heavenly kennel
where my dog awaits my arrival
wagging his tail in furious friendship!

But I'll not indulge in sadness here:
why bewail a companion
who was never servile?

His friendship was more like that of a porcupine
preserving its prickly autonomy.

His was the friendship of a distant star
with no more intimacy than true friendship called for
and no false demonstrations:
he never clambered over me
coating my clothes with mange;
he never assaulted my knee
like dogs obsessed with ***.

But he used to gaze up at me,
giving me the attention my ego demanded,
while helping this vainglorious man
understand my concerns were none of his.

Aye, and with those bright eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd gaze up at me
contentedly;
it was a look he reserved for me alone
all his entire sweet, gentle life,
always merely there, never troubling me,
never demanding anything.

Aye, and often I envied his energetic tail
as we strode the shores of Isla Negra together,
in winter weather, wild birds swarming skyward
as my golden-maned friend leapt about,
supercharged by the sea's electric surges,
sniffing away wildly, his tail held *****,
his face suffused with the salt spray.

Joy! Joy! Joy!
As only dogs experience joy
in the shameless exuberance
of their guiltless spirits.

Thus there are no sad good-byes
for my dog who died;
we never once lied to each other.

He died, he's gone, I buried him;
that's all there is to it.



Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.—Pablo Neruda



Tonight I will write the saddest lines
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight I will write the saddest lines.
I will write, for example, “The night is less bright
and a few stars shiver in the distance
as I remember her unwarranted light ...”

Tonight I will write her the saddest lines:
that I loved her as she loved me too, sometimes,
all those long, lonely nights when I held her tight
and filled her ears with indecipherable rhymes ...

Then she loved me too, as I also loved her,
compelled by the spell of her enormous eyes.
Tonight I will write her the saddest lines
as I ponder love’s death and our mutual crimes.

Outside I hear night—silent, cold, dark, immense—
as these delicate words fall, useless as dew.
Oh, what does it matter that love came to naught
if love was false, or perhaps even true?

And yet I hear songs being sung in the distance.
How can I forget her, so soon since I lost her?
I seek to regain her, somehow bring her closer.
But my heart has been blinded; she will not appear!

Now moonlight and starlight whiten dark trees.
We also are ghosts, by love’s failing light.
My love has failed me, but how I once loved her!
My voice ... this cursed wind ... what use to recite?

Another’s. She will soon be another’s.
Her body, her voice, her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her! And why should I love her
when love is sad, short, mad, fickle, unwise?

Because of cold nights we clung through so closely,
I’m not satisfied to know she is gone.
And while I must end this hell I now suffer,
It’s sad to remember all love left undone.

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.—Pablo Neruda



Religión en el Este (“Religion in the East”)
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

for Tom Merrill

I realized in Rangoon:
the gods were our enemies
as much as God;
alabaster gods elongated like white whales;
gilded gods gleaming like golden ears of corn;
serpentine gods coiling around the crime of being born;
naked detached buddhas
smiling enigmatically at cocktail parties,
contemplating pointless eternity
like Christ on his grotesque cross;
all of them capable of any atrocity,
of imposing their heaven upon us;
all armed with implements of torture, or death;
all demanding piety or, better yet, our blood;
avaricious gods imagined by men
to excuse their cowardice, or to conceal it;
gods everywhere, inescapable;
and the whole earth reeking of heaven,
for sale, like merchandise.



In all the languages of men only the poor will know your name.—Pablo Neruda



The Heights of Macchu Picchu, Canto VIII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

for Martin Mc Carthy, who put me up to it

Ascend with me, my American love!

Let’s kiss these mysterious stones together!

The Urubamba’s torrential silver
lures pollen to fly from its golden chalice
while above this canyon’s unbroken silence
everything soars: the climbing grapevines’ fruitless branches,
the shopworn plants, each inflexible garland.

Come, elfin life, test your wings above the earth,
test the cold, crystalline air,
****** the embrittled emeralds aside,
test even these frigid waters, cascading from the icepacks.

Test love, lambent Love itself, until the night's sudden implosion
over the Andes' atlean peaks,
when, reeling on the reddening knees of dawn,
you feast your startled eyes on its snowblind offspring.

Oh Wilkamayu of the sonorous looms,
when you unleash your thunderbursts,
when you crazily rend your thunder’s skeins
leaving gauzy white clouds to bind wounded snow,
when your wild winds whip sheer cliffs into avalanches,
roaring as if to arouse the sky from its sleep,
what language will you awaken at last in the ear,
thus lately freed from your Andean inundations?

Who imprisoned the frigid lightning bolt,
left it chained to these Promethean heights,
scattered its glacial tears,
brandished its mercurial swords,
hammered out the threads of its war-torn stamens,
led it to this warrior's bower
then left it to lie in a rocky fissure?

What do your harried illuminations reveal,
your rebellious lightnings signal?
Must we travel inhibited by words?
Impeded by frozen syllables,
these dark languages, gold-brocaded banners,
fathomless mouths and conquered cries
arising from your silver arterial waters?

Who decapitates lily-like eyelids
from those come to observe the earth’s occupants?
Who scatters dead seeds
flung from your waterfall hands
only to atrophy here
into fossilized coal?

Who flings branches over precipices
only to bury our banal farewells?

On love, Love!, do not approach the boundaries;
avoid idle adoration of sunken heads;
nor let time exhaust all possibilities
in this strange abode of broken overtures;
nor think, between these cascading waters and sheer cliff walls,
to reclaim high mountains’ elevated airs,
nor the wind’s white laminations,
nor the blind canal’s guidance toward high cordilleras,
nor the dew’s brilliant solicitations;
but ascend, blossom by blossom, through the thickets,
clambering up the coiling serpent flung from the crags above.

From this escarpment zone of flint and forest,
from this emerald stardust broken by jungle clearings,
Mantur, the valley, emerges like a living creature
save for its eerie silence.

Ascend to my very being, to my own individual dawn,
even to this higher crown of solitudes.

This fallen kingdom survives in us nonetheless.

While racing across the Andes' sundial the condor's shadow
passes black as a marauder.



For now, I ask no more than the justice of eating.—Pablo Neruda



La Barcarola Termina (“The Watersong Ends”)
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is time, love, to sever the somber rose,
to shut off the stars, to re-bury the ashes in earth;
and then, in the insurrection of light, to awake with those who awoke,
lest we continue this dream of reaching the far shore of a sea without shores.



One Pillar
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

One pillar props up consolations,
so please don’t bother telling me anything!
Does the pale metalloid heal you, really?
I have a terrible fear of re-becoming an animal,
of the terrible anger that devolves men to boys.
And after so many words?



Soliloquio en Tinieblas (“Soliloquy at Twilight”)
from Estravagario, 1958
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don’t you know there’s no one in the streets
and no one inside the houses either? Only eyes in the windows.
If you lack someplace to sleep,
knock on a door and they’ll open it,
but only to a certain point,
and you’ll see that it’s cold inside,
that the house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
because your stories are worthless.
And if you suggest tenderness
the dog and cat will bite you.



Poesía (“Poetry”)
from Memorial de Isla Negra, 1964
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Something transpired in my soul,
a fit of fever or a flurry of wings,
after which I made my way,
deciphering that fire;
finally I wrote the first faint line,
pale, insubstantial, pure nonsense,
or perhaps the pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
then suddenly I saw
the heavens
revealed,
gates flung wide open.

Keywords/Tags: Pablo Neruda English Translations, Spanish Poems, Love Sonnets, Quotes, Epigrams, Macchu Picchu

Clumsy Love

It was clumsy the day they first met

A hot day in New York City, photography at a baseball game, purple hair, and overpriced lemonade. There was a 15 year-old girl and her friend, and there was a slight fangirl moment when meeting a 17 year old boy who was famous school-wide for his singing and acting. There was an exchange of names, a photograph, and a friendship.

It was clumsy the second day, too.

Persistently bought coffee from the little round shop with way too many sugar packets, a misguided museum employee, too much root beer, and pigeons that were startled by the boy yelling “44!”

The third day was no less clumsy.

There was a broadway show in Shubert Alley, an unknown desire, and a sleepless night for the boy, though the girl remained ignorant of his new-found crush. If only the girl knew that a year from now, a promposal would be reenacted, a first kiss would be given and taken, and “I love you” would be said. If only the boy knew that his “immature” desire would be replaced with love, and passion, and, well, her. If only they knew what would happen in the next 365 days.

It was clumsy that one night in the pool.

A sticky, humid heat in the air, string lights hung over head, four friends swimming in the girls pool, stars in the sky, and the boy, throwing the girl into the pool simply because he could. The girl loved him then, though she wouldn’t allow herself to think about it, so they remained as they were: friends.

It was clumsy that day in Hershey Park.

There were sharp turn on the Wild Mouse, a stranger met and then lost again, and the boy, who kept telling the girl of other boys who were staring at her. Maybe it was his secret way of telling her that he thinks she’s beautiful, but she never knew.

It was clumsy in the movie theater.

There was crab rangoon and smuggled sushi, an 11:00 movie about superheroes, and a returned wish to hold a girl’s hand, though the girl, somehow, remained oblivious still.

It was clumsy in September and November.

There was a girl with a broken heart, betrayal from the friends from New York, a different boy who was never meant to be, and the boy who was meant to be, listening to every word, watching every tear, and slowly, unknowingly, fixing her heart. Through three hourlong video calls, text messages, and abandoned lunch periods he loved her still, though he remained the friend that he knew she needed.

It was clumsy in December.

There was a realization of how much he meant to her, a lot of poems, a revelation of jealousy of the girl who was flirting with him, and a lot of tears. There was a still 15 year old girl and a now 18 year old boy, and she allowed herself to fall, in the clumsiest way possible, into him.

If was clumsy on Valentine's day.

There was a singing Valentine, as well as one with a bad pun, there was a comparison to a sister, there was a"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and there was a hug. A question was asked that day "Does he like her?", But was disregarded with a shrug "He said she was like a sister, so I guess not". It stung her her heart just a little, but she accepted the hit that was unintentionally given. And clumsily, once again, she laughed and smiled, after all, he and to her.

If was clumsy at the cabaret Cafe.

There was some pie and ice cream, a song sung to her, though she only wished he meant it that way, a slippery cafeteria for and tights, a confession, and two questions. The confession being to him, that she was happy to know him, a question to her, does she like him, to which she lied "no", and when the question was returned, the boy avoided an answer when the girl returned a question.

It was clumsy the Monday afterwards.

It was clumsy when he wouldn't meet her eyes. She still can't explain how much that hurt her, it stabbed at her heart and caught in her throat. After all: her best friend didn't even want to look at her. Her heart was slippery and clumsy as it sunk towards her stomach. There were tears during first period, and a text after school from the girl who apologized for lying because she liked him after all, and was too afraid of rejection to tell him before, yet no confirmation came from him.

It was clumsy on March 3rd.

There were poems, missing heart beats, and grammar mistakes. There was relief and there was fear. There was nervousness for the next day, knees shaking, heart racing as she turned every corner, waiting to see his face.

It was clumsy on March 16th.

When she fell to the ground. There are six pink roses, a stuffed turtle named Cleopatra, and a PowerPoint slide with a pun. There was an expectation he had wished to live up to and there was success. She fell to the ground and feel into his arms and they both cried of happiness and shock.

It was clumsy on March 18th.

There were silent cellos, empty risers, a dark room and racing heartbeats. There were seven kisses before saying goodbye, they were her first. There were two definitions of perfect, coincidentally, there were also two names. There was a broken water bottle and a boy in a parking lot. There was a girl, now sixteen, and a boy, now eighteen, and they were talking in love in the dark.

It was clumsy on April 3rd.

There was a stairwell, a thought, a confession, and an "I love you" returned in the same breath of air held between them.

It was clumsy in the hammock.

There was an unbalanced swaying, a list of questions and answers, and a metaphor about falling.

It was clumsy at lunch.

There was an attempted hug, an accidental tackle, and a girl who tripped over her own feet.

It was clumsy yesterday, it is clumsy today, and it will be clumsy tomorrow.

There was New York City, coffee, Broadway in Shubert Alley, root beer, Hershey Park and movie theaters. There was a broken heart, video calls, realizations, poems, songs, and apple pie with ice cream. There were grammar mistakes, pink roses, turtles, teddy bears, silent cellos, risers, absent heartbeats, and stairwells. There was love unreturned from fear of rejection born from the roots of doubt. And then, there was love, and memories, and secrets. And they became them, and "us" was their new favorite word.

by Rudyard Kipling*

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
‘Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!'
      Come you back to Mandalay,
      Where the old Flotilla lay:
      Can't you ‘ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?
      On the road to Mandalay,
      Where the flyin'-fishes play,
      An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

‘Er petticoat was yaller an' ‘er liggle cap was green,
An' ‘er name was Supi-yaw-lat–jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an ‘eathen idol's foot:
      Bloomin' idol made o' mud–
      Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd–
      Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed ‘er where she stud!
      On the road to Mandalay,
      Where the flyin'-fishes play,
      An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd *** ‘er little banjo an' she'd sing ‘Kulla-lo-lo!'
With ‘er arm upon my shoulder an' ‘er cheek agin my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.
      Elephints a'pilin' teak
      In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
      Where the silence ‘ung that ‘eavy you was ‘arf afraid to speak!
      On the road to Mandalay,
      Where the flyin'-fishes play,
      An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

But that's all shove be'ind me–long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no ‘busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' ‘ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
‘If you've ‘eard the East a-callin', you won't never ‘eed naught else.'
      No! You won't ‘eed nothin' else
      But them spicy garlic smells,
      An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly-temple -bells;
      On the road to Mandalay,
      Where the flyin'-fishes play,
      An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty ‘ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin' but wot do they understand?
      Beefy face an' grubby ‘and–
      Law! Wot do they understand?
      I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
      On the road to Mandalay,
      Where the flyin'-fishes play,
      An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;*
For the temple-bells are callin', and' it's there that I would be–
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
      On the road to Mandalay,
      Where the old Flotilla lay,
      With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
      On the road to Mandalay,
      Where the flyin'-fishes play,
      An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

against the moon rays
we drank rose milk,
burned the petals beside
sandalwood and benzoin.
we wondered
how anything could be
as magnificent as this moment?

I plucked rangoon creepers
they did not slip through my
fingers into dust
like the crepe myrtles. at your feet
I laid bengal trumpets and
lavender; pink oleander,
between your toes.
smoldering agarbatti
wafted over your eyes
everything cedar smoke and fire -
no burnt offering
could smell as sweet.

These are English translations of Spanish poems by Pablo Neruda. There are also English translations of Pablo Neruda quotes and epigrams.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and is generally considered to be one of the world's best poets. Indeed, he was called "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language" by Gabriel García Márquez.

Neruda always wrote in green ink, the color of esperanza (hope).



Love! Love until the night implodes!—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



You can crop all the flowers but you cannot detain spring.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Every Day You Play (Excerpt)
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water!
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp lovingly
like a cornucopia, every day, with ecstatic hands ...



As if you were set on fire from within,
the moon whitens your skin.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



The Book of Questions
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Is the rose ****
or is that just how she dresses?

Why do trees conceal
their spectacular roots?

Who hears the confession
of the getaway car?

Is there anything sadder
than a train standing motionless in the rain?



While nothing can save us from death,
still love can redeem each breath.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



In El Salvador, Death
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Death still surveils El Salvador.
The blood of murdered peasants has never clotted;
time cannot congeal it,
nor does the rain erase it from the roads.
Fifteen thousand were machine-gunned dead
by Martinez, the murderer.
To this day the coppery taste of blood still flavors
the land, bread and wine of El Salvador.



Please understand that when I awaken weeping
it's because I dreamed I was a lost child
searching the leaf-heaps for your hands in the darkness.
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Love Sonnet LXVI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates between ice and fire.

I love you only because you’re the one I love;
I hate you deeply, but hatred makes me implore you all the more
so that in my inconstancy
I do not see you, but love you blindly.

Perhaps January’s frigid light
will consume my heart with its cruel rays,
robbing me of the key to contentment.

In this tragic plot, I ****** myself
and I will die loveless because I love you,
because I love you, my Love, in fire and in blood.



I'm no longer in love with her, that's certain ...
yet perhaps I love her still.
Love is so short, forgetting so long!
—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.

I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your ******* like almonds, whole.

I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.

I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.



I own my own darkness, alone.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I alone own my darkness.—Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth's incandescent white flame;
I love you like phantoms embraced in the dark ...
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed.

I love you like bushes that refuse to bloom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now, thanks to your love, an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body's odors.

I love you without knowing—how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care;
I love you this way because I know no other.

Here, where "I" no longer exists ... so it seems ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.



I like for you to be still: it’s as if you were absent;
then you hear me from far away, yet my voice fails to touch you.
—Pablo Neruda “Me Gustas Cuando Callas” translation by Michael R. Burch



If You Forget Me
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I need you to know one thing ...

You know
how it goes:
if I gaze up at the glowing moon,
if observe the blazing autumn’s reddening branches from my window,
if I touch the impalpable ash of the charred log’s wrinkled body ...
everything returns me to you,
as if everything that exists
—all aromas, sights, solids—
were small boats
sailing toward those isles of yours that await me.

However ...
if little by little you stop loving me
then I shall stop loving you, little by little.

And if you suddenly
forget me,
do not bother to investigate,
for I shall have immediately
forgotten you
also.

If you think my love strange and mad—
this whirlwind of streaming banners
gusting through me,
so that you elect to leave me at the shore
where my heart lacks roots,
just remember that, on that very day,
at that very hour,
I shall raise my arms
and my roots will sail off
to find some more favorable land.

But
if each day
and every hour,
you feel destined to be with me,
if you greet me with implacable sweetness,
and if each day
and every hour
flowers blossom on your lips to entice me, ...
then ah my love,
oh my only, my own,
all that fire will be reinfernoed in me
and nothing within me will be extinguished or forgotten;
my love will feed on your love, my beloved,
and as long as you live it will be me in your arms ...
as long as you never leave mine.



Laughter is the soul's language.—Pablo Neruda



Sonnet XLV
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don't wander far away, not even for a day, because—
how can I explain? A day is too long ...
and I’ll be waiting for you, like a man in an empty station
where the trains all stand motionless.

Don't leave me, my dear, not even for an hour, because—
then despair’s raindrops will all run blurrily together,
and the smoke that drifts lazily in search of a home
will descend hazily on me, suffocating my heart.

Darling, may your lovely silhouette never dissolve in the surf;
may your lashes never flutter at an indecipherable distance.
Please don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because then you'll have gone far too far
and I'll wander aimlessly, amazed, asking all the earth:
Will she ever return? Will she spurn me, dying?



I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.—Pablo Neruda



My Dog Died
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My dog died;
so I buried him in the backyard garden
next to some rusted machine.

One day I'll rejoin him, over there,
but for now he's gone
with his shaggy mane, his crude manners and his cold, clammy nose,
while I, the atheist who never believed
in any heaven for human beings,
now believe in a paradise I'm unfit to enter.

Yes, I somehow now believe in a heavenly kennel
where my dog awaits my arrival
wagging his tail in furious friendship!

But I'll not indulge in sadness here:
why bewail a companion
who was never servile?

His friendship was more like that of a porcupine
preserving its prickly autonomy.

His was the friendship of a distant star
with no more intimacy than true friendship called for
and no false demonstrations:
he never clambered over me
coating my clothes with mange;
he never assaulted my knee
like dogs obsessed with ***.

But he used to gaze up at me,
giving me the attention my ego demanded,
while helping this vainglorious man
understand my concerns were none of his.

Aye, and with those bright eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd gaze up at me
contentedly;
it was a look he reserved for me alone
all his entire sweet, gentle life,
always merely there, never troubling me,
never demanding anything.

Aye, and often I envied his energetic tail
as we strode the shores of Isla Negra together,
in winter weather, wild birds swarming skyward
as my golden-maned friend leapt about,
supercharged by the sea's electric surges,
sniffing away wildly, his tail held *****,
his face suffused with the salt spray.

Joy! Joy! Joy!
As only dogs experience joy
in the shameless exuberance
of their guiltless spirits.

Thus there are no sad good-byes
for my dog who died;
we never once lied to each other.

He died, he's gone, I buried him;
that's all there is to it.



Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.—Pablo Neruda



Tonight I will write the saddest lines
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Tonight I will write the saddest lines.
I will write, for example, “The night is less bright
and a few stars shiver in the distance
as I remember her unwarranted light ...”

Tonight I will write her the saddest lines:
that I loved her as she loved me too, sometimes,
all those long, lonely nights when I held her tight
and filled her ears with indecipherable rhymes ...

Then she loved me too, as I also loved her,
compelled by the spell of her enormous eyes.
Tonight I will write her the saddest lines
as I ponder love’s death and our mutual crimes.

Outside I hear night—silent, cold, dark, immense—
as these delicate words fall, useless as dew.
Oh, what does it matter that love came to naught
if love was false, or perhaps even true?

And yet I hear songs being sung in the distance.
How can I forget her, so soon since I lost her?
I seek to regain her, somehow bring her closer.
But my heart has been blinded; she will not appear!

Now moonlight and starlight whiten dark trees.
We also are ghosts, by love’s failing light.
My love has failed me, but how I once loved her!
My voice ... this cursed wind ... what use to recite?

Another’s. She will soon be another’s.
Her body, her voice, her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her! And why should I love her
when love is sad, short, mad, fickle, unwise?

Because of cold nights we clung through so closely,
I’m not satisfied to know she is gone.
And while I must end this hell I now suffer,
It’s sad to remember all love left undone.

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.—Pablo Neruda



Religión en el Este (“Religion in the East”)
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

for Tom Merrill

I realized in Rangoon:
the gods were our enemies
as much as God;
alabaster gods elongated like white whales;
gilded gods gleaming like golden ears of corn;
serpentine gods coiling around the crime of being born;
naked detached buddhas
smiling enigmatically at cocktail parties,
contemplating pointless eternity
like Christ on his grotesque cross;
all of them capable of any atrocity,
of imposing their heaven upon us;
all armed with implements of torture, or death;
all demanding piety or, better yet, our blood;
avaricious gods imagined by men
to excuse their cowardice, or to conceal it;
gods everywhere, inescapable;
and the whole earth reeking of heaven,
for sale, like merchandise.



In all the languages of men only the poor will know your name.—Pablo Neruda



The Heights of Macchu Picchu, Canto VIII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

for Martin Mc Carthy, who put me up to it

Ascend with me, my American love!

Let’s kiss these mysterious stones together!

The Urubamba’s torrential silver
lures pollen to fly from its golden chalice
while above this canyon’s unbroken silence
everything soars: the climbing grapevines’ fruitless branches,
the shopworn plants, each inflexible garland.

Come, elfin life, test your wings above the earth,
test the cold, crystalline air,
****** the embrittled emeralds aside,
test even these frigid waters, cascading from the icepacks.

Test love, lambent Love itself, until the night's sudden implosion
over the Andes' atlean peaks,
when, reeling on the reddening knees of dawn,
you feast your startled eyes on its snowblind offspring.

Oh Wilkamayu of the sonorous looms,
when you unleash your thunderbursts,
when you crazily rend your thunder’s skeins
leaving gauzy white clouds to bind wounded snow,
when your wild winds whip sheer cliffs into avalanches,
roaring as if to arouse the sky from its sleep,
what language will you awaken at last in the ear,
thus lately freed from your Andean inundations?

Who imprisoned the frigid lightning bolt,
left it chained to these Promethean heights,
scattered its glacial tears,
brandished its mercurial swords,
hammered out the threads of its war-torn stamens,
led it to this warrior's bower
then left it to lie in a rocky fissure?

What do your harried illuminations reveal,
your rebellious lightnings signal?
Must we travel inhibited by words?
Impeded by frozen syllables,
these dark languages, gold-brocaded banners,
fathomless mouths and conquered cries
arising from your silver arterial waters?

Who decapitates lily-like eyelids
from those come to observe the earth’s occupants?
Who scatters dead seeds
flung from your waterfall hands
only to atrophy here
into fossilized coal?

Who flings branches over precipices
only to bury our banal farewells?

On love, Love!, do not approach the boundaries;
avoid idle adoration of sunken heads;
nor let time exhaust all possibilities
in this strange abode of broken overtures;
nor think, between these cascading waters and sheer cliff walls,
to reclaim high mountains’ elevated airs,
nor the wind’s white laminations,
nor the blind canal’s guidance toward high cordilleras,
nor the dew’s brilliant solicitations;
but ascend, blossom by blossom, through the thickets,
clambering up the coiling serpent flung from the crags above.

From this escarpment zone of flint and forest,
from this emerald stardust broken by jungle clearings,
Mantur, the valley, emerges like a living creature
save for its eerie silence.

Ascend to my very being, to my own individual dawn,
even to this higher crown of solitudes.

This fallen kingdom survives in us nonetheless.

While racing across the Andes' sundial the condor's shadow
passes black as a marauder.



For now, I ask no more than the justice of eating.—Pablo Neruda



La Barcarola Termina (“The Watersong Ends”)
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It is time, love, to sever the somber rose,
to shut off the stars, to re-bury the ashes in earth;
and then, in the insurrection of light, to awake with those who awoke,
lest we continue this dream of reaching the far shore of a sea without shores.



One Pillar
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

One pillar props up consolations,
so please don’t bother telling me anything!
Does the pale metalloid heal you, really?
I have a terrible fear of re-becoming an animal,
of the terrible anger that devolves men to boys.
And after so many words?



Soliloquio en Tinieblas (“Soliloquy at Twilight”)
from Estravagario, 1958
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Don’t you know there’s no one in the streets
and no one inside the houses either? Only eyes in the windows.
If you lack someplace to sleep,
knock on a door and they’ll open it,
but only to a certain point,
and you’ll see that it’s cold inside,
that the house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
because your stories are worthless.
And if you suggest tenderness
the dog and cat will bite you.

*

Poesía (“Poetry”)
from Memorial de Isla Negra, 1964
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Something transpired in my soul,
a fit of fever or a flurry of wings,
after which I made my way,
deciphering that fire;
finally I wrote the first faint line,
pale, insubstantial, pure nonsense,
or perhaps the pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
then suddenly I saw
the heavens
revealed,
gates flung wide open.

Keywords/Tags: Pablo Neruda English Translations, Spanish Poems, Love Sonnets, Quotes, Epigrams, Macchu Picchu