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Pablo Neruda's Poetry

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Ling2
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Pablo Neruda's Poetry

Post by Ling2 » Thu, 30 Mar 2006 9:24 pm

Tonight I Write (the saddest lines)
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

--------------------------------

You can find beauty in sadness too, can't you?

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Post by Wham » Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:29 pm

Ling2, I visited Neruda's house in Santiago, Chile about 10 years ago. It was magical. If you can imagine, a home like a poem - whimsical - but emotional - and all about fun. There is also something mystical about Chile in that it is such a long long way from the rest of civilization - yet so civilized. I still favor Chilean wine to this day just to suppport that wonderful counrty - and in a small way - Neruda.

That is a wonderful poem.
"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." Samuel Johnson

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Post by dot dot dot » Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:36 pm

Ling,

Did you watch "Il Postino", a movie like a poem itself and with Pablo Neruda as a main character.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110877/

Eric

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Post by madwolfie » Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:40 pm

beauty in sadness and also in darkness... definite...

Beautiful poem by the way, Ling2 :)

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This one is good too

Post by serendipity » Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:58 pm

The Question

Love, a question
has destroyed you.

I have come back to you
from thorny uncertainty.

I want you straight as
the sword or the road.

But you insist
on keeping a nook
of shadow that I do not want.

My love,
understand me,
I love all of you,
from eyes to feet, to toenails,
inside,
all the brightness, which you kept.

It is I, my love,
who knocks at your door.
It is not the ghost, it is not
the one who once stopped
at your window.
I knock down the door:
I enter your life:
I come to live in your soul:
you cannot cope with me.

You must open door to door,
you must obey me,
you must open your eyes
so that I may search in them,
you must see how I walk
with heavy steps
along all the roads
that, blind, were waiting for me.

Do not fear,
I am yours,
but
I am not the passenger or the beggar,
I am your master,
the one you were waiting for,
and now I enter
your life,
no more to leave it,
love, love, love,
but to stay.

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Post by Ling2 » Fri, 31 Mar 2006 9:49 pm

Wham wrote:Ling2, I visited Neruda's house in Santiago, Chile about 10 years ago. It was magical. If you can imagine, a home like a poem - whimsical - but emotional - and all about fun. There is also something mystical about Chile in that it is such a long long way from the rest of civilization - yet so civilized. I still favor Chilean wine to this day just to suppport that wonderful counrty - and in a small way - Neruda.

That is a wonderful poem.
Wow Wham, thanks for sharing :)
I won't ask your age for being so nice :lol: :P

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Post by Ling2 » Fri, 31 Mar 2006 9:50 pm

Eric from the Netherlands wrote:Ling,

Did you watch "Il Postino", a movie like a poem itself and with Pablo Neruda as a main character.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110877/

Eric
Thanks Eric, I will buy & watch it soon :)

Thanks all for sharing :) Maddie, glad you like it :)

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Post by Bubbles » Fri, 31 Mar 2006 9:53 pm

Good link, especially for his Nobel Lecture which is on RHS of page...

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laurea ... a-bio.html
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas.

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Post by Quasimodo » Sat, 01 Apr 2006 9:36 am

Amazing that a country with such a sad past brings out such beauty.

I lived in Chile for a while, teaching at the University in Valdivia (Universidad Austral), absolutely beautiful country, simply stunning. great peopel, though more Spanish than the Spaniards and stiffer than an ironing board compared to their neighbours.

So many lovely stories . . . Ahhh, I will wallow in melancholy for a while now.
One in the hand is worth two of something

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Post by earthfriendly » Sat, 01 Apr 2006 2:17 pm

I watched "The Postman" many years ago. It was so moving and I could not sleep for a few nights following. I love how simple, pure and sweet it is. I wish all of us and the entire world works that way. For me, it ranks up there in the likes of "elephant man" (british black and white version).

I have severely retarded memory due to two C-sections. I remembered the movie as being Italian and not Chilean.

Well if it is about Chile then I know where my next vacation should be.

BTW, I am not a big wine drinker but I heard a lot of raves about Chilean wines.

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Post by earthfriendly » Sat, 01 Apr 2006 2:34 pm

Ling, your poem get me all teary and another movie comes to mind "Snow Following On Cedar". Even though the movie has a story or plot. To me, it is more like a love story. It is about this white American guy who could never get over his feelings for his adolescent sweetheart, who happens to be of Japanese descent. The movie gives me a sweet sorrow feeling. Their feelings for each other is so pure and yet so tainted. And oh, the girl (don't know if she is Japanese/chinese) is so ethereal-looking. Looking at her cute, innocent and childlike face makes me just want to go up to her and stroke it.

It was set in the 40's and needless to say, the love story did not have a happy ending. .


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Falli ... m_adaption

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Post by dot dot dot » Sat, 01 Apr 2006 2:47 pm

earthfriendly wrote:I watched "The Postman" many years ago. It was so moving and I could not sleep for a few nights following. I love how simple, pure and sweet it is. I wish all of us and the entire world works that way. For me, it ranks up there in the likes of "elephant man" (british black and white version).

I have severely retarded memory due to two C-sections. I remembered the movie as being Italian and not Chilean.

Well if it is about Chile then I know where my next vacation should be.

BTW, I am not a big wine drinker but I heard a lot of raves about Chilean wines.
Il Postino is Italian and the scene of play is Italy, to be more precise the island of Capri, off coast at Napels.

Neruda is a Chilean poet, who had to go and live in exile on this tiny islet in the Italian mediterrenean, because of his communist sympathies. That is the background of this movie, in which the local postman gets to know the famous poet when delivering the mail for Neruda. They become friends and the postman has talent for poetry himself. He falls in love and marries the beautiful local Beatrice, but when going to a mass demonstration for freedom of speech to perform his own poems, the postman gets killed in the riots at the demonstration.

Beauuutiful movie....

Eric

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Post by earthfriendly » Sat, 01 Apr 2006 2:57 pm

Oh yeah it is coming back now bits by bits. Thanks for the memory jog. And yes, the beautiful (voluptous ?) Beatrice !

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