Pablo Neruda

I love the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's poetry. Had he been alive, he would have turned a 106 on the 12th of July this year. If only I knew Spanish I would have enjoyed the flavor of his poems even more. If reading his translations can be so exhilarating, imagine the impact of reading those poems in in the language in which the poet thought of those words. Writing love poems is difficult. It is hard to become mushy or melodramatic. The ability to express this complex human emotion on paper is not easy. Neruda was a respected diplomat who always used green colored ink to write his poems. He felt green was the color of hope. Neruda created songs for children as a hobby. He was 19 when he wrote Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971. He shared his insight on poets and poetry in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He said ...

"From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny."

When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the President Salvador Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.My serendipitous discovery of Neruda was through his poem  If You Forget Me. It is lyrical in the way it sways from one mood to another. I love the way it begins. When I first read this, I was in college. I saw his book of poems while browsing through books of poetry in a bookshop in Delhi.  I picked a page at random and that was this poem.I opened this page and read the first few words. They had a sense of urgency. " I want you to know one thing..." it began. It was conversational. How eloquently it summarizes the complexity of love when he says, "you know how this is..." I read the poem again and again. It was visual. I could see the poem flash before me long after I went back home dazed by its impact. I was even tempted to memorize the poem and then resisted that temptation. That is the worst thing to do to a poem.I never memorize poems. When you memorize a poem, it is like putting a bird in a cage. You can see whenever you want to, but you can never see it fly.When I wrote my second novel Married But Available, I rediscovered this poem when Keya wrote these lines for Abbey. Just the way she would. On a sheet of blue kite-paper. Who else could have introduced Abbey to this shade of love?

If You Forget Me

I want you to knowone thing.

You know how this is:if I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashor the wrinkled body of the log,everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists,aromas, light, metals,were little boatsthat sailtoward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,if little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenlyyou forget medo not look for me,for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,the wind of bannersthat passes through my life,and you decideto leave me at the shoreof the heart where I have roots,rememberthat on that day,at that hour,I shall lift my armsand my roots will set offto seek another land.

Butif each day,each hour,you feel that you are destined for mewith implacable sweetness,if each day a flowerclimbs up to your lips to seek me,ah my love, ah my own,in me all that fire is repeated,in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,my love feeds on your love, beloved,and as long as you live it will be in your armswithout leaving mine.

Madonna reads out this poem from her song Frozenhttps://youtu.be/T5yADgMzGJoTonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines is another gem by Neruda. Watch this version recited beautifully by the Cuban American actor Andy Garcia - most remembered for his role in the film The Godfather Part IIIhttps://youtu.be/swXlvCwXCYwFinally, a collection of more poems by Pablo Neruda on SoundCloud--------------Pramita Bose of Asian Age newspaper spoke to me about my love for this poem Here is the interview Also featured in the newspaper Deccan Chronicle dated 18 Aug 2010