Pablo Neruda Translation: Every Day You Play

Every Day You Play by Pablo Neruda loose translation by Michael R. Burch Every day you play with Infinity’s rays. Exquisite visitor, you arrive with the flowers and the water. You are vastly more than this immaculate head I clasp tightly like a cornucopia, every day, between my hands ... My Dog Died by Pablo Neruda loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch My dog died; so I buried him in the backyard garden next to some rusted machine. One day I'll rejoin him, over there, but for now he's gone with his shaggy mane, his crude manners and his cold, clammy nose, while I, the atheist who never believed in any heaven for human beings, now believe in a paradise I'm unfit to enter. Yes, I somehow now believe in a heavenly kennel where my dog awaits my arrival wagging his tail in furious friendship! But I'll not indulge in sadness here: why bewail a companion who was never servile? His friendship was more like that of a porcupine preserving its prickly autonomy. His was the friendship of a distant star with no more intimacy than true friendship called for and no false demonstrations: he never clambered over me coating my clothes with mange; he never assaulted my knee like dogs obsessed with sex. But he used to gaze up at me, giving me the attention my ego demanded, while helping this vainglorious man understand my concerns were none of his. Aye, and with those bright eyes so much purer than mine, he'd gaze up at me contentedly; it was a look he reserved for me alone all his entire sweet, gentle life, always merely there, never troubling me, never demanding anything. Aye, and often I envied his energetic tail as we strode the shores of Isla Negra together, in winter weather, wild birds swarming skyward as my golden-maned friend leapt about, supercharged by the sea's electric surges, sniffing away wildly, his tail held erect, his face suffused with the salt spray. Joy! Joy! Joy! As only dogs experience joy in the shameless exuberance of their guiltless spirits. Thus there are no sad good-byes for my dog who died; we never once lied to each other. He died, he's gone, I buried him; that's all there is to it. Tonight I will write the saddest lines by Pablo Neruda loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Tonight I will write the saddest lines. I will write, for example, “The night is less bright and a few stars shiver in the distance as I remember her unwarranted light ...” Tonight I will write her the saddest lines: that I loved her as she loved me too, sometimes, all those long, lonely nights when I held her tight and filled her ears with indecipherable rhymes ... Then she loved me too, as I also loved her, compelled by the spell of her enormous eyes. Tonight I will write her the saddest lines as I ponder love’s death and our mutual crimes. Outside I hear night—silent, cold, dark, immense— as these delicate words fall, useless as dew. Oh, what does it matter that love came to naught if love was false, or perhaps even true? And yet I hear songs being sung in the distance. How can I forget her, so soon since I lost her? I seek to regain her, somehow bring her closer. But my heart has been blinded; she will not appear! Now moonlight and starlight whiten dark trees. We also are ghosts, by love’s failing light. My love has failed me, but how I once loved her! My voice ... this cursed wind ... what use to recite? Another’s. She will soon be another’s. Her body, her voice, her infinite eyes. I no longer love her! And why should I love her when love is sad, short, mad, fickle, unwise? Because of cold nights we clung through so closely, I’m not satisfied to know she is gone. And while I must end this hell I now suffer, It’s sad to remember all love left undone. You can crop all the flowers but you cannot detain spring. —Pablo Neruda, loose translation by Michael R. Burch While nothing can save us from death, still love can redeem each breath. —Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch As if you were set on fire from within, the moon whitens your skin. —Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Please understand that when I awaken weeping it's because I dreamed I was a lost child searching the leaf-heaps for your hands in the darkness. —Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch I’m no longer in love with her, that's certain ... yet perhaps I love her still. Love is so short, forgetting so long! —Pablo Neruda, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch I love you only because I love you by Pablo Neruda loose translation by Michael R. Burch I love you only because I love you; I am torn between loving and not loving you, Between apathy and desire. My heart vacillates between ice and fire. I love you only because you’re the one I love; I hate you deeply, but hatred Bends me all the more toward you, so that the measure of my variableness Is that I do not see you, but love you blindly. Perhaps January’s frigid light will consume my heart with its cruel rays, robbing me of any hope of peace. In this tragic plot, I am the one who dies, Love’s only victim, And I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, my Love, in fire and blood. Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda loose translation by Michael R. Burch I do not love you like coral or topaz, or the blazing hearth’s incandescent white flame: I love you as obscure things are embraced in the dark: secretly, in shadows, unrevealed & unnamed. I love you like shrubs that refuse to bloom while pregnant with the radiance of mysterious flowers; now thanks to your love an earthy fragrance lives dimly in my body’s odors. I love you without knowing how, when, why or where; I love you forthrightly, without complications or care: I love you this way because I know no other. Here, where “I” no longer exists, nor “you”... so close that your hand on my chest is my own, so close that your eyes close gently on my dreams.