Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Nerudawas the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet-diplomat and politician Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. He derived his pen name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda. Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971...
NationalityChilean
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth12 July 1904
CityParral, Chile
CountryChile
dream land roots
Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood - and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.
roots islands sorrow
From sorrow to sorrow love crosses its islands and establishes roots that are watered by weeping.
roots tree splendor
Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots?
regret rain roots
Tell me, is the rose naked or is that her only dress? Why do trees conceal the splendor of their roots? Who hears the regrets of the thieving automobile? Is there anything in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?
con los
Quiero hacer contigoLo que primavera hace con los cerazos
freedom hear moment near road taught voice water
Now, on the road to freedom, I was pausing for a moment near Temuco and could hear the voice of the water that had taught me to sing.
birds sleeping soul
I awoke and at times birds fled and migrated /that had been sleeping in your soul.
arrow certain dark love loves rose scholars-and-scholarship shadow
I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topazor arrow of carnations that propagate fire:I love you as one loves certain dark things,secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
far-away feels whole
Where were you then? Who else was there? Saying what? Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly when I am sad and feel you are far away?
pain pride blood
Who do I belong to? How come I mortgaged my being till I don't belong to myself? How come I sold my blood? And who now owns my indecisions, my hands, my private pain, my pride?
revenge selfish distance
Raw hatred took its time making an outpost of its rage and prepared for me a savage crown with rusty, bloodstained spikes. It wasn't pride that made me keep my heart at a distance from such terror, nor did I waste on revenge or the pursuit of power the forces that came from my selfish griefs or my accumulated joys. It was something else-my helplessness.
sleep dark thinking
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep, downward, in the soaked guts of the earth, absorbing and thinking, eating each day.
hands pieces sun
Sometimes a piece of sun burned like a coin in my hand.
writing humanity earth
On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.