Pablo Neruda quotes

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

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

Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.

I like you when you are quiet, because it is as though you are absent.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.

In its mortal flame the light wraps you.

En su llama mortal la luz te envuelve.

and drenching and flaring by turns, adolescence / like a lamp overturned in the rain.

South is a stallion, submerging, / in the gradual trees and the dew, garlanded.

What the memoir writer remembers is not the same thing the poet remembers.

The private tragedy for us Communists was realizing that, on several sides of the Stalin problem, the enemy was right.

La íntima tragedia para nosotros los comunistas fue darnos cuenta de que, en diversos aspectos del problema Stalin, el enemigo tenía razón.

The poems it contains were written here and there, throughout my exile in Europe.

Los poemas que contiene fueron escritos aquí y allá, a lo largo de mi destierro en Europa.

The happiness I feel in offering these to you is vast as a savanna.

I love you as one loves certain obscure things, / secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras, / secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, / so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, / tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness, / and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.