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Poet's Choice

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My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

A love song and an artistic credo, resembling ordinary speech yet extraordinary in its leaps and turns, the young man's poem is characteristic of Neruda's lifelong audacity and directness.

(Pablo Neruda's poem "Tonight I Can Write" can be found in

and Fundaci¿n Pablo Neruda.)

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