Poetry by Pablo Neruda

Recording by Miranda Richardson for the Lyrics and Poetry Soundtrack of Il Postino.


Poetry
by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

This poem is a simple but very powerful description of how poetry captures a poet, how it suddenly arrives without warning, and gives meaning and beauty to everything.

Pablo Neruda's TO WASH A CHILD

TO WASH A CHILD
by Pablo Neruda

Only the most ancient love on earth
will wash and comb the statue of the children,
straighten the feet and knees.
The water rises, the soap slithers,
and the pure body comes up to breathe
the air of flowers and motherhood.

Oh, the sharp watchfulness,
the sweet deception,
the lukewarm struggle!

Pablo Neruda's TONIGHT I CAN WRITE

TONIGHT I CAN WRITE
by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, "The night is shattered
And blue stars shiver in the distance."

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through the nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her over and over again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I did love her too.
How could I not have loved her great eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter if my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied because it has lost her.