Sonnet LXIX by Pablo Neruda

Yesterday was Pablo Neruda’s birthday, and since he is one of my favorite poets, I dedicate this post to him, my translation of Sonnet LXIX from 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor

Life, love, longevity, forgetting and remembering… these apply to so many things, not just poetry, not just love songs, not just pain. Life is about living, about picking up books and flowers and cobblestones, about the wind in our hair but the sweat in our brow and the tears in our hearts. 

And we go on, whether in the field, or the classroom, or the road. 

Happy birthday, Pablo Neruda: you have enriched my life! 

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” Pablo Neruda

Translation by Ana M. Fores Tamayo:

Perhaps not being is being without your being,
without your cutting the noon day
like a blue flower, without your walking
later, through the fog and cobblestone,

without that light you carry in your hand
which golden, maybe others will not see,
which maybe, no one knew its growth
as the red beginnings of the rose,

without your being, in fact, without your coming
abruptly, provocatively, to know my life,
flash of a rosebush, wheat of the wind,

and from then on I am because you are,
and from then on you are, I am, we are,
and because of love I will be, you will be, we will be.

Soneto LXIX:

Tal vez no ser es ser sin que tú seas,
sin que vayas cortando el mediodía
como una flor azul, sin que camines
más tarde por la niebla y los ladrillos,

sin esa luz que llevas en la mano
que tal vez otros no verán dorada,
que tal vez nadie supo que crecía
como el origen rojo de la rosa,

sin que seas, en fin, sin que vinieras
brusca, incitante, a conocer mi vida,
ráfaga de rosal, trigo del viento,

y desde entonces soy porque tú eres,
y desde entonces eres, soy y somos,
y por amor seré, serás, seremos.