If You Forget Me: Pablo Neruda’s Staggering (Un)breakup Poem
By Maria Popova
Love is a fire that takes two to keep burning, but one to extinguish — if the hearth of either heart is too damp with doubt, both wake up one day to find their hands cupping ashes. And yet when two people have loved each other and parted, the fire is forever embering between them, however great the distance in space, in time, in thought. The wind of a single word and the gust of the smallest gesture can rekindle it in a flash, often to the surprise of both. All true love is a smoking spell against forgetting.
That is the aspect of love I feel burning through “If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) — a breakup poem and a poem of unbreaking, one that begins as an ode, twists into an ultimatum, and finally reveals itself to be a lamentation, a hymn of longing, a bittersweet acknowledgement that once a person has entered another’s heart, they always have a place in it, but also a recognition of how they ought to show up in order to honor that place.
That, at least, is how I receive this poem, at this particular point in my life — for, as the teenage Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother, “Once a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader.” It is read here by two dear friends a generation apart — Karen Maldonado in Spanish and Rose Hanzlik in English, as translated by Donald Devenish Walsh in the bilingual pocket-sized collection of immensities Love Poems (public library). It is a poem that warrants as accompaniment nothing less than Bach’s transcendent Cello Suite No. 1, performed by none other than the great Spanish cellist Pablo Casals.
IF YOU FORGET ME
by Pablo NerudaI want you to know
one thing.You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.If suddenly you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
SI TÚ ME OLVIDAS
Pablo NerudaQuiero que sepas
una cosa.Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe,
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en ese día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.Pero
si cada día,
cada hora
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable.
Si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.
For a kindred counterpart from a very different kind of poet, savor David Whyte’s “The Truelove,” then revisit Neruda’s love letter to language, his ode to silence, and his moving Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

























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