Neruda's 15th Poem of Love

Today, a friend of mine sent me an email in which he attaches a number of poems by the Nobel Prize winner Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. I wished to thank him. I did not know how. Then I thought of some of Neruda's poems on love which I previously translated into English. But before I did so, I re-read the poem. But when I did so, I found I did not like the way I translated some of the lines. So I made some alterations. Of all the poems of Neruda's on love, this one is by far the simplest. In this poem, Neruda describes the state of mind of the timid lover who lives in mortal fear that the one he loves will say something he cannot bear to hear. So instead of speaking, he lets his action speak for him: he kisses her to seal her mouth.

Here is the poem with my re-translation in English and some of the notes I made back in January this year:

Me gustas cuando callas porque estàs como austente, I like it when you are speechless because you’re like absent

y me oyes desde lejos , y mi voz no te toca.                   and you hear me from afar, and my voice doesn't touch you.

Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado                  Your eyes seem to have been stolen from you                           

y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.                    And  it seems a kiss will seal your mouth.

 

Como todas cosas estàn llenas de mi alma                As everything is filled with my soul

emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.                 You emerge from things, filled with  my soul.

Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,                Dream butterfly, you appear to my soul

y te pareces a la palabra melancolia.                        and you appear to the word melancholy.

 

Me gusta cuando callas y estàs como distante.          I like it when you are speechless and you're like distant

Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrulo.           and you're like moaning, butterfly in lullalby.                            

Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:           and you hear me from afar, and my voice does'nt reach you: 

dejame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.                  Leave me speechless with your own silence                   

 

Dejame que te hable también con tu silencio             Leave me to talk to you with your silence too

claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.       bright as a light, simple as a ring.

Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.                 You're like the night, speechless and star-studded

Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.         Your silence is star-like, so faraway and simple. 

 

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente. I like it when you are speechless because you're like absent

Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.             Distant and sad as if you were dead.

Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.                One word then a smile suffice

Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.                  And I am happy, happy from not being sure.

In this poem, Neruda employs the traditional quatrain form. He plays around with the rhyme scheme, following the end rhyme of abcb, bcbc, acbc, ccbc, acac. He also plays around with a few simple ideas, adopting the same first line in the first, third and fourth stanzas with "I like it when..."  He creates a kind of unity but also variety by switching the subject and the object of love. He wants her silence to become his silence and he does so curiously, drawing themselves together by their common silence, united by the bond or "ring" of silence..

In the poem, Neruda employs, as in other poems, a number of opposites, of contrasts, of polarities: speech and silence, nearness and distance, the present and the future, the body and the soul, reality and dream, nature and man, natural light and artificial light, presence and absence, self and other, happiness and sadness. If he wishes his lover to be absent, silent, faraway as the stars, it is only so that she may the better and have more time to reflect more deeply upon on her relations with him, instead of dissipating her concentration on how she feels by talking trivials sweet nothingness.  He wishes distance to enhance, not to reduce, their emotional closeness. Perhaps he realizes the paradox which folk wisdom has taught so many lovers: that absence makes the heart grow fonder. He wants it to be simple like a ring, which binds her to him. He wants it to be simple because as he says, everything is filled with or full of his soul, perhaps because he sees everything as being somehow all connected to her. To emphasize the silence, he asks her to leave him to talk to her but only in the language of silence: the language of action! He hopes for just a smile from her and just one word.  It doesn't take much imagination to guess what that word may be. Thus the most important subject of the poem is left "unsaid". But it takes him 16 lines to not to say that word. Thus his poem is more or less like the "negative" of a photograph. What should be bright is left dark. It is left dark because the thought of letting it see light is too risky. The reversal came from the last line. He is happy "from not being sure"! This is the magic of love and what makes lovers hanker after it: the constant reversal of feelings, from surfeit, from excess, the vacillating and mysterious mixture of hopes and fears, hopes for more and fear of loss.