Pablo Neruda

Today, we note the birth date of Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 — September 23, 1973), Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Neruda’s body of poetry is so rich and varied that it defies classification or easy summary. His love poetry, such as the youthful Twenty Love Poems and the mature Los versos del Capitán (1952; The Captain’s Verses), is tender, melancholy, sensuous, and passionate.

In “material” poetry, such as Residencia en la tierra, loneliness and depression immerse the author in a subterranean world of dark, demonic forces. And finally there is his poetry of common, everyday objects, animals, and plants, as in Odas Elementales.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

--Pablo Neruda

[Translated by Mark Eisner]