End of April

Tonight I can write...

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example: 'The night is fractured
and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think I do not have her, to feel I have lost her.

Hear the vast night, still vaster without her.
Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is fractured and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.
My heart looks for her and she is not with me.

The same night whitens, in the same branches.
We, of that time, we are not the same.

I don't love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the breeze to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I don't love her, that's certain, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so brief: forgetting lasts so long.

Because through nights like this when I held her in my arms,
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,
and these are the last lines I will write for her.

- Pablo Neruda -