The Saddest Lines

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Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance."

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

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

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
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 she makes me suffer
and these the last verse that I write for her.

Translated from the Spanish by W.S. Merwin.

I have long loved this poem. When Drew and I broke up, shortly after college, I read it over and over, grieving, finding comfort in the confusion it captures.

Yet, even in that grief, I knew I would go on. That I still loved Drew, that I would be heartbroken for a while, that the heartbreak would be real, but that eventually I would recover. That there would be some last pain, some last reflection, some inner closure, and then I would move forward and find another. There is always someone, in the distance, singing -

And I did. I spent a summer grieving, took a five-week road trip across the country listening to Nora Jones with tears running down my face, arrived in Seattle ready to start a new life. I was well on my way to getting over him. I had a great job. I made new friends. I started seeing an adorable guy who adored me. Life went on, and went on well.

Drew and I eventually got back together, obviously, but it was a new relationship. I had gotten over him. And then I fell in love with him again.

Which turns out to have been important, since now, considering my options, I already know that I can get over him. That he is a love of my life, but he need not be the only love of my life.

I have no illusions that breaking up after a year-and-a-half college relationship and divorcing after a seven-year marriage with two kids are anywhere near the same ballpark. And the idea that he will be another's - painful, painful.

But I do know, deep down, that I can get over him, and that is immensely freeing. I am not afraid I will never find someone else. In the distance, someone is singing. Should we stay together, it will be because I want to be with him - and it will be yet another new relationship together. A new marriage. We, of that time, are no longer the same.

Tonight, though, I grieve the relationship I had, the marriage I had, the partner I thought I had. To think I do not have that. To feel that I have lost that.