Afterthought -

I think I've put this on here before, but I was mulling my world this evening and this poem came to mind. Pablo Neruda. Who else. How on earth can these students not appreciate the beauty of such poetry??


Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
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Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
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The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
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Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
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She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
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To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
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What does it matter than my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
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This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
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My sight searches for me as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
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The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
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I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
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Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
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I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
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Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
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Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.