Tonight I write the Saddest Lines

As a part of my course, I did Pablo Neruda's poem in my Under-grad level a couple of years ago. It was called: Tonight I write the saddest lines. It was in translation (Of course!)
Those of you, who have read the poem know how simple yet deep the lines are. Those of you who haven't, I'd like to share the poem with you and my thoughts on it. So this is not a regular post of stuff that I do or that happen to me. Read It If and when you have the time:


Tonight I write the saddest lines,
Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."  [Notice how he states that its night and obviously night = without light= darkness. He says the sky is full of stars but uses the word "shiver" for stars when people usually say the stars twinkled; Also the mention of the "blue" night]

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.  [Isn't it such a haunting picture. I can almost hear the wind crying in this line]

Tonight I write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.  [Such blatant truth layered with some amount of uncertainty in such a simple line]

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. [The truth again, in a tone full or regret and remorse]
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? [The bigger truth: If he had the opportunity to love her again, He would]

Tonight I write the saddest lines.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.  [Forsaken, Betrayed, Crushed. The pain is almost physical. To have had her once and to have lost her is excruciating]

To hear the immense night, more immense without her. ["Hear" the night says he's alone. It describes his solitude and loneliness. The silence is deafening and his desolation, a tribulation; Also the use of the word "immense" to describe how vast and void the night is] And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. [How these sad, depressing lines actually brings the reader some sort of relief because he/she can identify & relate]

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. [Helpless yet the desire and his longing to have just one sight of her] 
My heart searches for her and she is not with me. [Defeat and Disappointment] 

The same night that whitens the same trees. [How time flies by and separates them; forcing them to be somewhere else, to be somebody else, even If they may not wan it]
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her. [ The lie: I no longer love her" because he wants to deny it but somehow he cannot even lie. He goes right ahead in the nest line and even though he uses the past tense, It is evident that he still loves her]
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. [ I could cry in this line.He sounds vanquished and broken]

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.  [The harsh truth that when Its over, Its only over because something new has to begin. The acrid truth that he will be or probably has been replaced]

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her. [ The insanity creeping in and deliberate confusion taking over]
Love is so short and oblivion so long. [ Love dies but memories come back to haunt you over and over again. Love is concise but forgetting takes more than one life time]

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.  [Despite the denial and confusion in the earlier lines, He eventually admits that He is missing her]

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her. [ He ends the poem with a lie, knowing that he is lying; knowing that the readers don't believe him because when he lies, he escapes from this coarse reality; And escaping looks like the only sane thing left for him to do]
Tonight I write the saddest lines