I have a project due tomorow
and I can't figure this poem out
It hurts my head!


I don't think there is a rhyme scheme...
and I need it analyzed.

Thanks


Saddest Poem by Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Any particular questions about the poem? It's not a particularly deep poem. He's just saying that the emotion of sadness has overcome him since his lover left. The theme is illustrated in these two lines:

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.


Les

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2006 01:25AM by lg.

it's a translation. I don't think it rhymes in spanish either, but there seems to be a fixed meter (I don't speak spanish, so I can't help much here, but I'm sure Hugh Clary would find this a nice challenge):

[www.mat.upm.es] />
By the way, next time, post your homework a bit earlier. Don't expect an answer in 5 minutes! I think I was asleep by the time you posted it, being on the other side of the world probably.

Just another lover's angst poem to me. The translated meter seems to be mainly iambic pentameter, but looking at the original, most lines appear to be of 15 syllables, all feminine endings. Assuming Naruda wanted five beats, one is forced to skip over (elision) some syllables:

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche

PUEDo escriBIR los VERsos mas TRIStes esta NOche
puaydoh escribeer los behrsos mas treestays estah nohchay

(Yeah, he prolly pronounced versos as bersos.)

I can WRITE the SADdest of POems toNIGHT

Not Pablo's best, I wouldn't think, but I hear women are supposed to point their toes at the ceiling over such sentiments.

Kidding! Only kidding.

When he writes that Espan-yolie with such sentimental feeling
then he's having all the wimmen point their toesies at the ceiling
But if I put all my writin' through the BabelFish, for sure
then the wimmen would be running with their feetsies towards the door

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2006 01:15PM by JohnnySansCulo.

Ah thank you all so much!
<3