Pablo Neruda’s Love Thoughts: For Your Dear Departed

Back in the old days when people can’t express in their own words what they feel, they sing, dance, paint, or simply borrow the words of some great poet. Sometimes the deepest thoughts of sorrow do not come across the attendees (of a funeral or memorial service) because of the lack or poor choice of words. When tasked to give eulogy, and you are not sure if you withstand the whole speech without giving in to tears, it is almost always better to recite a poem, or quote a famous line.

One good source of love and sad poems is the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Born to the name, Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, he chose his pen name from a Czech poet, Jan Neruda. He was more a poet during his lifetime than a politician and a diplomat. Though he died of cancer, he was one of the lucky few to have lived to see the glory of his days –he won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Here are a few of the many poems I personally love:

A Song of Despair

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.

The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn

It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Don’t Go Far Off

Don’t leave me even for an hour, because

Then the little drops of anguish will run together,

The smoke that roams looking for a home will drift

Into me, choking my heart

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach,

May your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.

Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest.

From – Twenty Poems of Love

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.

Hear the vast night, vaster without her.

Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass

What does it matter I couldn’t keep her

The night is fractured and she is not with me.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her

My heart looks for her; she is not with me.

100 Love Sonnets

So I wait for you like a lonely house

Till you will see me again and live in me

Till then my windows ache.

Still Another Day

We the mortals touch the metals,

The wind, the ocean shores, the stones,

Knowing they will go on inert, or burning,

And I was discovering, naming all these things:

It was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

About the Author:

Shiela Mae Parreno is a writer for the Funeral Program Site.com where you can find beautiful templates for funeral related printed materials. LIKE us on Facebook to gain access to a free template. Follow us visually on Pinterest.