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To my Beloved

  • Categories: Poetry

Happy 15th Anniversary my Love!  Take it away Pablo . . .

______

Don’t go far off, not even for a day, because —
because — I don’t know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don’t leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you’ll have gone so far
I’ll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

-Pablo Neruda

______

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7 Responses

  4. Thank you. This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve read. Happy anniversary indeed that can celebrate with such a poem!

  6. I so love Pablo. Happy 15 years to you both.

    Reading this poem made me cry, because one can never imagine the occurences that could drive us to break such promises. And, because, becoming so beautifully interwinned with another in this thing called marriage makes us … so very, tenderly vulnerable. It’s the best thing ever, and also, the most frightening.