Pablo Neruda is considered one of the most important and representative Spanish-speaking poets of all time. That is why we have compiled in this selection of poems by Pablo Neruda some of his most emblematic writings of him. 12 poems by Pablo Neruda
As we will see below, many of his poems stand out for dealing with the theme of love in an incomparable way, but the truth is that this Spanish writer composed poems on many different topics. Poems about life, death, nature and friendship, among others,
also stand out within his vast work . 1. My heart was a live and cloudy wing…
My heart was a live and cloudy wing…
a terrifying wing full of light and longing.
It was spring over the green fields.
Blue was the height and the ground was emerald.
She – the one who loved me – died in the spring.
I still remember her sleepless dove eyes.
She -the one who loved me- closed her eyes… late.
Country afternoon, blue. Afternoon of wings and flights.
She -the one who loved me- died in spring…
and took spring to heaven.
We begin our selection of Neruda’s poems with these beautiful verses about nature , freedom and hope. A series of memories with dreamlike overtones that undoubtedly allows us to think about the deepest interpretations of it. 2. Friend, don’t die
Friend, don’t die.
Listen to me these words that come out burning,
and that nobody would say if I didn’t say them.
Friend, don’t die.
I am the one who waits for you in the starry night.
Which under the bloody setting sun awaits.
I watch the fruits fall on the dark earth.
I look dance the drops of dew on the grass.
At night to the thick perfume of roses,
when the circle of immense shadows dances.
Under the southern sky, the one that awaits you when
the afternoon air kisses like a mouth.
Friend, don’t die.
I am the one who cut the rebel garlands
for the jungle bed fragrant with sun and jungle.
The one who brought yellow hyacinths in his arms.
And torn roses. And bloody poppies.
The one who crossed his arms to wait for you, now.
The one who broke his bows. The one who bent his arrows.
I am the one who keeps the taste of grapes on his lips.
Fried clusters. Vermilion bites.
He who calls you from the plains sprouted.
I am the one who wishes you at the hour of love.
The afternoon air bends the high branches.
Drunk, my heart. under God, wobble.
The untied river bursts into tears and sometimes
her voice thins and becomes pure and tremulous.
The blue complaint of the water resounds in the evening.
Friend, don’t die!
I am the one who waits for you in the starry night,
on the golden beaches, on the blonde ages.
The one who cut hyacinths for your bed, and roses.
Stretched out among the grass I am the one who awaits you!
As we said, Pablo Neruda is famous for his poems about love, but the truth is that I deal with many different topics , among others, as we mentioned, about death. 3. The sea
I need the sea because it teaches me: I
don’t know if I’m learning music or awareness:
I don’t know if it’s a single wave or a deep
one or just a hoarse voice or a dazzling
suggestion of fish and ships.
The fact is that even when I am asleep I
somehow magnetically circulate
in the university of the waves.
It’s not just the crushed shells
as if some trembling planet
participated in gradual death,
no, from the fragment I reconstruct the day,
from a streak of salt the stalactite
and from a spoonful the immense god.
What once taught me I keep it! It is air,
incessant wind, water and sand.
It seems little for the young man
who came to live here with its fires,
and yet the pulse that rose
and fell to its abyss,
the cold of the blue that crackled,
the collapse of the star,
the tender unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with the foam,
the still power, there, determined
as a stone throne in the depths,
replaced the enclosure in which
stubborn sadness grew, piling up oblivion,
and I abruptly change my existence:
I gave my adherence to pure movement.
For our poet, nature was an excellent way to convey his feelings, and in poems like this he proves it. Through these elements he is able to reach the depths of the human being and describe it according to its most genuine way of being. 4. Sonnet 93
If ever your chest stops,
if something stops burning through your veins,
if your voice in your mouth goes without being a word,
if your hands forget to fly and fall asleep,
Matilde, love, stop your lips parted
because that last kiss must last with me,
it must remain motionless forever in your mouth
so that it also accompanies me in my death.
I will die kissing your crazy cold mouth,
hugging the lost cluster of your body,
and looking for the light of your closed eyes.
And so when the earth receives our embrace we will
go confused in a single death
to live forever the eternity of a kiss.
A quite sad poem by Pablo Neruda that tells of the devoted love that the writer felt for his beloved. But love, like life, is not eternal, because the latter depends on the former. 5. Sonnet 83
It’s good, love, to feel you close to me at night,
invisible in your dream, seriously nocturnal,
while I unravel my worries
as if they were confused networks.
Absent, through dreams your heart navigates,
but your body thus abandoned breathes
looking for me without seeing me, completing my dream
like a plant that duplicates itself in the shade.
Upright, you will be another who will live tomorrow,
but from the frontiers lost in the night,
from this being and not being in which we find ourselves,
something remains drawing us closer in the light of life
as if the seal of the shadow marked
its secret creatures with fire.
Again, death and love, as well as life and suffering go hand in hand for the author . We continue with our selection. 6. Bella
BELLA,
like in the fresh stone
from the spring, the water
opens a wide flash of foam,
that’s the smile on your face,
beautiful.
Beautiful,
with fine hands and thin feet
like a little silver horse,
walking, flower of the world, that’s
how I see you,
beautiful.
Beautiful,
with a copper nest tangled
in your head, a nest
the color of dark honey
where my heart burns and rests,
beautiful.
Bella,
your eyes don’t fit on your face,
your eyes don’t fit on the ground.
There are countries, there are rivers
in your eyes,
my country is in your eyes,
I walk through them,
they give light to the world
where I walk,
beautiful.
Bella,
your breasts are like two loaves made
of cereal land and a golden moon,
beautiful.
Bella,
your waist
was made by my arm like a river when I
spent a thousand years in your sweet body,
beautiful.
Bella,
there is nothing like your hips,
maybe the earth has
somewhere hidden
the curve and scent of your body,
maybe somewhere,
beautiful.
Bella, my beauty,
your voice, your skin, your
beautiful nails, my beauty,
your being, your light, your shadow,
beautiful,
all that is mine, beautiful,
all that is mine, mine,
when you walk or rest,
when you sing or do you sleep,
when you suffer or dream,
always,
when you are near or far,
always,
you are mine, my beautiful,
always.
In his work feelings, emotions and sensations always prevail, but the writer does not neglect the physical and more “superficial” part , to which he also gives an important value. 7. Slave of mine…
SLAVE of mine, fear me. Love me. my slave!
I am with you the vastest twilight of my sky,
and in it my soul rises like a cold star.
When they walk away from you, my steps return to me.
My own whip falls on my life.
You are what is inside me and is far away.
Fleeing like a chorus of chased mists.
Next to me, but where
Far away, what is far away.
And what being far under my feet walks.
The echo of the voice beyond the silence.
And what in my soul grows like moss in the ruins.
A poem full of possible interpretations that makes us doubt who is the true slave of this relationship, if the beloved or Pablo Neruda himself. A relationship that distills suffering that a priori, are not clear. 8. If you forget me
I want you to know one thing.
You know how it is:
if I look at the crystal moon, the red branch
of slow autumn in my window,
if I touch the impalpable ash by the fire
or the wrinkled body of the firewood,
everything leads me to you, as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals, were small boats that sail
towards your islands that await me.
Now, if little by little you stop loving me, I will stop loving
you little by little.
If suddenly you forget me, do not look for me,
I will have already forgotten you.
If you consider the wind of flags that passes through my life
long and crazy
and you decide to leave me at the edge
of my heart where I have roots,
think that on that day,
at that hour I will raise my arms
and my roots will go out to look for another land.
But if every day,
every hour you feel that you are destined for me
with relentless sweetness.
If every day it goes up
a flower to your lips to look for me,
oh my love, oh my,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love is nourished by your love, beloved,
and as long as you live I will be in your arms
without get out of mine
Poetry in general has always treated oblivion as an event similar to death . Sometimes, these two concepts are even spoken of as synonyms, insofar as one ceases to exist when the rest of beings forget it. 9. Love
Woman, I would have been your son, for drinking
the milk from your breasts like from a spring,
for looking at you and feeling you by my side, and having you
in the laughter of gold and the voice of crystal.
For feeling you in my veins like God in the rivers
and adoring you in the sad bones of dust and lime,
because your being will pass by my side without sorrow
and come out in the stanza -clean of all evil-.
How would I know how to love you, woman, how would I know how to
love you, love you like no one ever knew!
To die and still
love you more.
And still
love you more.
Pablo Neruda’s famous poem entitled Amor always calls attention to the comparison the author makes between his beloved and a mother. A more direct and explicit poem than perhaps many are used to. 10. Thirst for you
Thirst for you harasses me on hungry nights.
Trembling red hand that even her life rises.
Drunk with thirst, crazy thirst, thirst for the jungle in drought.
Thirst for burning metal, thirst for greedy roots…
That’s why you are the thirst and what has to quench it.
How can I not love you if I have to love you for that.
If that is the mooring how to cut it, how.
As if even my bones are thirsty for your bones.
Thirst for you, atrocious and sweet garland.
Thirsty for you that at night bites me like a dog.
The eyes are thirsty, what are your eyes for?
The mouth is thirsty, what are your kisses for?
The soul is on fire from these embers that love you.
The body live fire that will burn your body.
thirsty infinite thirst. Thirst that seeks your thirst.
And in it it is annihilated like water in fire.
Thirst as a synonym for that feeling of need of the other person has always been used in literature and poetry. In this poem by Pablo Neruda he takes up the metaphor and plays with it throughout this perfect poem.
Because thirst never ceases, neither does the need to feel close to love; and perhaps, writing poems being a writer of this level, even less so. 11. Naked
Naked you are as simple as one of your hands:
smooth, terrestrial, minimal, round, transparent.
You have moon lines, apple paths.
Naked you are thin as naked wheat.
Naked you are blue like the night in Cuba:
you have vines and stars in your hair.
Naked you are round and yellow
Like summer in a golden church.
Naked you are small like one of your nails:
curved, subtle, pink until the day
breaks and you get into the underground of the world
like in a long tunnel of suits and jobs:
your clarity goes out, dresses, unravels
and again it becomes a bare hand again. Pablo Neruda has always stood out for paying attention to details . Who knows, perhaps one of the traits that distinguishes poets from other people is precisely this. 12. My love, if I die and you don’t die…
My love, if I die and you don’t die, let’s
not give pain more territory:
my love, if you die and I don’t die,
there is no extension like the one we live in.
Dust in the wheat, sand in the sands
, time, wandering water, the vague wind
took us like sailing grain.
Could not find us in the time.
This meadow in which we find ourselves,
oh little infinity! we return
But this love, love, has not ended,
and just as it had no birth
it has no death, it is like a long river,
it only changes lands and lips.
The truth is that when we share our last days next to the loved one, it is most likely that one will leave before the other. What if he touches you
? What if it touches your loved one? What would be the best
- Read our 15 essential short poems.
- Discover the 16 types of poems with some examples.
