Pablo Neruda Translations
I love you only because I love you
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
I love you only because I love you;
I am torn between loving and not loving you,
Between apathy and desire.
My heart vacillates between ice and fire.
I love you only because you’re the one I love;
I hate you deeply, but hatred
Bends me all the more toward you, so that the measure of my variableness
Is that I do not see you, but love you blindly.
Perhaps January’s frigid light will consume my heart with its cruel rays,
robbing me of any hope of peace.
In this tragic plot, I am the one who dies,
Love’s only victim,
And I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, my Love, in fire and blood.
Love Sonnet XVII
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
I do not love you like coral or topaz,
or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame:
I love you as obscure things are embraced in the dark,
secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed.
I love you like shrubs that refuse to bloom
while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers;
now thanks to your love an earthy fragrance
lives dimly in my body’s odors.
I love you without knowing how, when, why or where;
I love you forthrightly, without complications or care:
I love you this way because I know no other.
Here, where “I” no longer exists, nor “you” ...
so close that your hand on my chest is my own,
so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.
Every Day You Play
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Every day you play with Infinity’s rays.
Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water.
You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp tightly
like a cornucopia, every day, between my hands ...
Love Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
I stalk the streets, silent and starving.
Bread does not satisfy me; dawn does not divert me
from my relentless pursuit of your fluid spoor.
I long for your liquid laughter,
for your sunburned hands like savage harvests.
I lust for your fingernails' pale marbles.
I want to devour your breasts like almonds, whole.
I want to ingest the sunbeams singed by your beauty,
to eat the aquiline nose from your aloof face,
to lick your eyelashes' flickering shade.
I pursue you, snuffing the shadows,
seeking your heart's scorching heat
like a puma prowling the heights of Quitratue.
You can crop all the flowers but you cannot detain spring.-Pablo Neruda, loose translation by Michael R. Burch
The Book of Questions
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Is the rose nude
or is that just how she dresses?
Why do trees conceal
their spectacular roots?
Who hears the confession
of the getaway car?
Is there anything sadder
than a train standing motionless in the rain?
While nothing can save us from death,
still love can redeem each breath.
?Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
In El Salvador, Death
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Death still surveils El Salvador.
The blood of murdered peasants has never clotted;
time cannot congeal it,
nor does the rain erase it from the roads.
Fifteen thousand were machine-gunned dead
by Martinez, the murderer.
To this day the coppery taste of blood still flavors
the land, bread and wine of El Salvador.
If You Forget Me
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I need you to know one thing ...
You know
how it goes:
if I gaze up at the glowing moon,
if observe the blazing autumn’s reddening branches from my window,
if I touch the impalpable ash of the charred log’s wrinkled body ...
everything returns me to you,
as if everything that exists
?all aromas, sights, solids?
were small boats
sailing toward those isles of yours that await me.
However ...
if little by little you stop loving me
then I shall stop loving you, little by little.
And if you suddenly
forget me,
do not bother to investigate,
for I shall have immediately
forgotten you
also.
If you think my love strange and mad?
this whirlwind of streaming banners
gusting through me,
so that you elect to leave me at the shore
where my heart lacks roots,
just remember that, on that very day,
at that very hour,
I shall raise my arms
and my roots will sail off
to find some more favorable land.
But
if each day
and every hour,
you feel destined to be with me,
if you greet me with implacable sweetness,
and if each day
and every hour
flowers blossom on your lips to entice me, ...
then ah my love,
oh my only, my own,
all that fire will be reinfernoed in me
and nothing within me will be extinguished or forgotten;
my love will feed on your love, my beloved,
and as long as you live it will be me in your arms ...
as long as you never leave mine.
Please understand that when I wake up crying
it's because I dreamed I was a lost child
searching through night leaves for your hands.
?Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Sonnet XLV
by Pablo Neruda
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Don't wander far away, not even for a day, because?
how can I explain? A day is too long ...
and I’ll be waiting for you, like a man in an empty station
where the trains all stand motionless.
Don't leave me, my dear, not even for an hour, because?
then despair’s raindrops will all run blurrily together,
and the smoke that drifts lazily in search of a home
will descend hazily on me, suffocating my heart.
Darling, may your lovely silhouette never dissolve in the surf;
may your lashes never flutter at an indecipherable distance.
Please don't leave me for a second, my dearest,
because then you'll have gone far too far
and I'll wander aimlessly, amazed, asking all the earth:
Will she ever return? Will she spurn me, dying?
Keywords/Tags: Spanish, Translation, Sonnet, Women, Romance, Romantic, Romantic Love, Heart, Desire, Passion
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