I was looking at various places online for new poetry and poets that I havn't read yet and I came across Pablo Neruda. All his poems have been translated from spanish I assume, and no doubt something was lost in the translation. It makes me want to take up spanish again. Maybe It's my emotional state I'm in from the events currently going on in my life, but these really got to me. Below are a sampling of what I've found. I hope you enjoy them.

sonnet xvii, by pablo neruda.

i do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations that fire shoots off.
i love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
i love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
i love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
i love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so i love you because i know no other way
than this: where 'i' does not exist, nor 'you',
so close, that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close, that your eyes close as i fall asleep.


XXV
Before I loved you, Love, nothing was my own:
I wavered through the streets, among objects:
nothing mattered or had a name:
the world was made of air, which waited.
I knew rooms full of ashes,
tunnels where the moon lived,
rough warehouses that growled Get lost,
questions that insisted in the sand.
Everything was empty, dead, mute,
fallen, abandoned, and decayed:
inconceivably alien, it all
belonged to someone else -- to no one:
till your beauty and your poverty
filled the autumn plentiful with gifts.

Your laughter
Take my breath away, if you wish,
Take the air away, but
Do not take your laughter away from me.

Do not take the rose away,
The lanceflower that you pluck,
The water that suddenly
Bursts forth in your joy,
The sudden wave
Of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
With tired eyes
At times from having seen
The unchanging earth,
But when your laughter enters
It rises to the sky seeking me
And it opens for me all
The doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
Hour your laughter
Opens, and if suddenly
You see my blood staining
The stones of the street...
Laugh, because your laughter
Will be for my hands
Like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in autumn,
Your laughter must raise
Its foamy cascade,
And in spring, love,
I want your laughter like
The flower I was waiting for,
The blue flower, the rose
Of my echoing country.

Laugh in the night,
In the day, on the moon,
Laugh at the twisted
Streets of the island,
Laugh at this clumsy
Boy who loves you,
But when I open
My eyes and close them,
When my steps go,
When my steps return,
Deny me bread, air,
Light, spring,
But never your laughter
For which I would die.

Omg!! that is amazing! what a perfect poet, I am so in awe how beautiful those poems are, thank you for posting them and bringing that wonderful soud on poetry to this site!

Nikita

..THANK U FOR POSTING SUCH BEAUTY!!!

diona