Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
I love Pablo Neruda’s poems. So much that I wanted to record this poem reading. One of my favorite poems by Neruda:
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
(Pablo Neruda, with minor edits by Migs)
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 him, and sometimes he loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held him in my arms
I kissed him again and again under the endless sky.
He loved me sometimes, and I loved him too.
How could one not have loved his great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have him. To feel that I have lost him.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without him.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep him.
The night is shattered and he 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 him.
My sight searches for him as though to go to him.
My heart looks for him, and he is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love him, that’s certain, but how I loved him.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch him hearing.
Another’s. He will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
His voice. His bright body. His inifinite eyes.
I no longer love him, that’s certain, but maybe I love him.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held him in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost him.
Though this be the last pain that he makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for him.
The recording (3 minutes) - hope you like it!
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(Background music: Silk Road by Yoyo Ma)
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July 29th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Twas a good poem, so emotional..
July 29th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
migs, i want to hug you…hu-hu T_T
July 29th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
migs,
that was a very stirring piece indeed. your voice carries the immense emotion of every word of this poem. i share the feeling. loving indeed stirs the innermost sentiments of an individual.
July 29th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
i love pablo neruda especially sonnet 17 , the one used in the movie Patch Adams.
July 29th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Have you heard this particular poem read by Andy Garcia (along with several other celebs reading various Pablo Neruda’s poems)? Its an amazing CD and enough to make you cry while sipping a cup of coffee and puffing a cigarette on a sunday afternoon.
Here is my favorite stanza from another poem about saying goodbye
“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”
W.H. Auden
July 29th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
one word..TARAY!
July 30th, 2007 at 7:46 am
@Tony - yeah, I think that CD is entitled “Il Postino” if I remember it correctly.
July 30th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
@TONY: That W.H. Auden was from “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, used appropriately enough during the funeral part. Lovely, truthful poem with a simple conclusion that’s full of honesty and painful learning.
July 30th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
damn…bigla tuloy ako nalungkot…the poem just reminded me of my ex again… ;-(
July 31st, 2007 at 12:14 am
favorite ko din si pablo neruda. at there was a time na dinidibdib ko rin yang tulang yan. pero diba kung minsan lang siya dyan para sayo and ikaw always present nakakapagod din knowing na in the end you’ll only just be a part of his memory and not of his future.
walang pagibig!
July 31st, 2007 at 2:00 am
whoa…can’t say anything…beautiful.. :’-)
July 31st, 2007 at 11:30 am
geez, ginawang “him” hehehe
July 31st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
” i like for you to be still.
its as if you were absent
and my voice does not reach you…”
—glenn close in ‘il postino’ soundtrack cd.
get it! get it! GET IIITTTTT!!! ; D
July 31st, 2007 at 9:08 pm
saying GOODBYE and LETTING GO means, I LOVE YOU…..too.
August 1st, 2007 at 6:22 am
Hahaha senti, pero totoo nga di ba? Parang si Kate Winslet, sa Sense and Sensibility naglalakad sa ulan, pupunt sa estate ni Wilhoughby and dun magrerecite ng sonnet ni shakespear, then hikbi, O Wilhoughby
Sino nga ba ang hindi naiwan at nasiphayo?
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I can only let out a sigh!
Migs, you should post poetry reading podcasts more!
I really, really like this.
Gives me boner. Haha.
No, for real, it’s really beautiful!
August 4th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Pablo Neruda
and
YoYo Ma
Rock!!!