The Saddest Poem

inspired by the Pablo Neruda poem "Puedo Escribir Esta noche"

 

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write for example, “The night is stillborn
and my body shivers beneath the down.”

The night wind eclipses the sky and laments.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved them, and sometimes they loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held a stranger in my dreams.
I offered him my hand and silent condolences.

He liked me; he knew I knew the disenchanted future.
It could be seen in my great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think another family is suffering this loss. To feel I have lost faith.

To hear the wails of remorse, the night a ghostly reminder of empty skies.
And the verse falls to my page like a vehicle to concrete.

What does it matter that my love could not prevent heartache?
The night is stillborn and our loved ones deceased.

This is all. In the distance someone is weeping. 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 within my grasp.

The same night his body is found decomposed.
We, who love the loved ones, are no longer the same.

I no longer have special powers, that's certain, but how I want them.
My touch tries to find a breath in the wind to restore life.

Another. Another is grieving as I have. Like my many tears before.
Her hand. His bright body. Their tenderness. Our hollow ears.

I no longer hear them breathing, that's certain, but I adore them.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held him in my imagination
My subconscious is not resting, nor is the family who lost him.

This will not be the last pain I am made to suffer
And these will not be the last verses I write about death.

Though these are our realities, they are my fears.
These are the saddest lines I live and write.

Reviews

[SweetPeachesAlways]

Definitely moving...heart-wringing was my first impression...creating impressions of memories that weren't necessarily my memories, but I could still see them, as stillborn snapshots.

There is beauty in melancholy writing...finding its way not only into your heart but into your mind as well...

[Haden]

these are indeed sad lines,
"I loved them, and sometimes they loved me too."
that one seemed the saddest to me, beyond death, why didn't they love you all the time?
great work, loss is always hard. i loved the mellow feel to this.

[Everett DeValle]

Hello Co Co, my heart, a very deep and heartwrenching write. I felt this to the bone. Yet your lines displays the menagerie of your life. Splendid read. ~Ev

[TL Boehm]

it is hauntingly beautiful - illiciting a deep ache of emotion....the line - the night is stillborn is especially resonant.

[DUALFISH320]

I FEEL YOU TO THE CORE MUJER....I AM SO SORRY.I LOVE NERUDA....HE IS DEFINATELY ONE OF MY FAVES