I’m a fan of Pablo Neruda. At least, I’m a fan of his 100 Love Sonnets (That’s Cien sonetos de amor, for those of you who are crazy Spanish-speakers). They’re pretty good poems. Admittedly, some of them are pretty weird, and yes, Neruda was a goddamned dirty communist (fuckin’ commies), but they’re pretty alright. At least the translations are. I don’t speak crazy.
So a few years back, I gotta do an English project. I gotta write a poem in the style of Neruda’s sonnets. Well, I didn’t fancy myself too good a poet. That’s not quite right. I’m a fucking awesome poet, but I didn’t want to be, ya know, fenced in by Neruda’s style, so what did a geek like me do? That’s right, I wrote a program to do it for me. A few (like, couple dozen) lines of PHP later, I had put together a script to run through all 100 of those sonnets and spit out poems that would be the most representational of his sonnets. I say poems because the 100 sonnets are actually split up into four smaller sections: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night.
The fun part of this project is that I couldn’t find all 100 sonnets already typed up for me online. Sonnet 17 seems pretty popular, but the other 99 are mostly SOL (IFHA). So I had to type up all 100 (1400 lines total). That was an interesting weekend. Very poetic. Mostly enjoyable. Got to know his poems real well, too.
Can’t remember a thing about them. Something about vines…
Anyways, here they are, the poems my script assembled line-by-line to be the most representative of Neruda’s sonnets (The weird part is how almost natural they sound. Either Neruda was really good, or really uncreative.):
Morning:
Love, how often I love you without seeing – without remembering you – not recognizing your glance, not knowing you, a gentian
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
I only want to by your stylist.
I know you exist, not only because your eyes fly open
you have vines and stars in your hair;
but also because you were molded in clay, you were fired
holding your hips, I hold the wheat in its fields again.
I loved you without knowing I did; I searched to remember you.
how before I loved you I forgot your kisses.
so I love you because I know no other way
when you were there with me I touched you, and my life
with your night-eyes, if you want – only let me
My Love: I love you for your clarity, your dark.
Afternoon:
You must know that I do not love and that I love you,
you come to me and climb your cool stairway,
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.
I love you in order to begin to love you,
the blue material that ignites in your hands,
then it’s your hair that passes by, and I think
I see your image, a bonfire, burning in the water.
that is why your mouth, your skin, your light, your sadnesses
your nails, offerings, in the suns of your fingers,
your mouth brimming with all joys.
My love has two lives, in order to love you:
that’s why I love you when I do not love you,
to your daily voice, to you nocturnal skin.
Evening:
I do not love you – except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
I am a poor man willing to love his fellow men.
I don’t know who you are. I love you. I don’t give away thorns, and I don’t sell them.
the fire. I love you only because it’s you
I love; I hate you no end, and hating you
bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
is that I do not see you but love you
Then there you are – in bloom, my heart, my dearest:
what I owe you is lucid, it is like a root
there you are. I look at you, lying on the earth.
so, my love, I knew that I was wounded,
dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.
Night:
When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
to your voice, to your hand flying on the guitar,
Close your dreams, Love, enter my eyes with your skies,
from sun to sun, till your mouth sings like a guitar.
No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you
May no one expect my blood or my song to rest!
But I cannot give up your love, not without dying.
so that you can reach everything my love directs you to,
so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move
I bend toward the fire of your nocturnal body, and I love
this shelter in the groove where your hand lives and flies,
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.
