Tonight

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write for example, ‘The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her”
PABLO NERUDA