I can write the saddest poem 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 tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her times and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, yet more immense without her.
And verses fall to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That is all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart seek her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

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

Someone 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 lost without her.

Though this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last verse I write for her.

--Pablo Neruda