thumbs up to CDC

well my heart leapt up on thurs when i went to school and the typist handed me the texts of the new cycle for Literature in English SPM paper. because the first title that i read is the title of my mostest favouritest poem in the world, written by the most passionate poet, Pablo Neruda. the people at the Curriculum Dev. Centre must have a soft spot for the Chilean poet like i do.

i first read the poem 10 years ago when i was recovering from a breakup. now everytime i read the poem i still cry, as i can feel the poignancy n the emptiness felt by the persona.

well my literature students will hear me raving about the poem during our lessons...that's for sure...haha...for those of you who've never heard of neruda or read his works....read this poem...btw there are some other versions as neruda wrote this in spanish, so this is a translation.

The Saddest Poem

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 love 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 that I dont have her. To think that I've lost her.

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

What does it matter that my love couldnt 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 so 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 whiten the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

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

Some 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 forgetting so long.

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

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

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)