Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
First published in 1924, ‘Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair’ is a collection of romantic poems by Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. This became Neruda’s most popular book and immediately established his reputation. It also became one of the most widely read collections of poetry written in Spanish. The book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world. The collection begins with passion, describing sensual affection that slackens into melancholy and separation in the later verses. The closing poem, “A Song of Despair,” is painful and anguished.
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Chapter 1 : Body of a Woman
Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant’s body digs into you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and night swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
But the hour of vengeance falls, and a love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the pink roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!
Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark River-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.
Chapter 2 : The Light Wraps You
The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
against the old propellers of twilight
that revolves around you.
Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with lives of fire,
and pure heir of the ruined day.
A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night
grow suddenly from your soul,
and the things that hide in you come out again
so that a blue and pallid people,
your newly born, takes nourishment.
Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
rise, lead and possess a creation
so rich in life that its flowers perish
and it is full of sadness.
Chapter 3 : Ah Vastness of Pines
Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking,
slow play of lights, solitary bell,
twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll,
earth-shell, in whom the earth sings!
In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them
as you desire, and you send it where you will.
Aim my road on your bow of hope
and in a frenzy I will free my flock of arrows.
On all sides I see your waist of fog,
and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours;
my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests
in your arms of transparent stone.
Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens
in the resonant and dying evening!
Thus in the deep hours I have seen, over the fields,
the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind.
Chapter 4 : The Morning Is Full
The morning is full of storm
in the heart of summer.
The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye,
the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands.
The numberless heart of the wind
beating above our loving silence.
Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees
like a language full of wars and songs.
Wind that bears off the dead leaves with a quick raid and
deflects the pulsing arrows of the birds.
Wind that topples her in a wave without spray
and substance without weight, and leaning fires.
Her mass of kisses breaks and sinks,
assailed in the door of the summer’s wind.
Chapter 5 : So That You Will Hear Me
So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.
Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands as smooth as grapes.
And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering ivy.
It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.
Before you they are peopled in the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.
Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
and to make you hear as I wasn’t you to hear me.
The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.
Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don’t forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.
But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.
I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.