Tonight He Wants to Sing a Song with Neruda

"....we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song...."

Pablo Neruda, Nobel Lecture, December 13, 1971

Tonight he attempts to string together the saddest lines,

As the night is cold and the stars shiver in the distant skies.

Someone from the far fields is singing a melancholy tone,

And the southern wind blows and sings along, a song so sad.

Tonight he lies still, staring the blank ceiling,

His sinking soul searching for her long lost smile.

Through night after night he had held her in his arms,

And kissed her again and again in the endless dreams.

But tonight he listens hard to those humming winds,

In the faintest hope to hear her voice so sweet.

His eyes seek her as though to fly out to her,

His heart beats for her, as she vanished from his dreams.

Tonight he attempts to weave together the saddest lines,

For he loved her, without her loving him in return.

And the kisses that covered the chocolates for her,

Were returned unclaimed, to be showered down the drains.

He had fallen for her cute still eyes, and who wouldn't?

But she may not belong to him, her smile and those infinite eyes.

His love could not keep her, for it wasn't pure,

As the snow that was whitening the trees down the street.

Tonight he scrambles through the saddest verses,

As his shattered panache lay in tatters.

To love was to risk not being loved in return,

And to leave was to risk the parting so painful.

Love comes to those who love through the hurt,

But the love was so short, and to forget takes long.

Adapted from 'Tonight I Can Write....'