"If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
of the heart where I have roots,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine





To me, this is a wonderful poem about loving someone and it does not necessarily means romantic love. For instance, every parent experiences the day when our children who we love more than life itself, who we gladily will give up our lives, our breath and they look back at us like we are strangers and strangers. The pain lies like daggers within.

There is the love of someone we cherished as they walked ahead of us and we memorized each turn of their head, each step they took, each way they reacted to the weather, an idea, a book. Then they looked back to us and looked past us as if we did not exist. Ah, the pain of that. We have all felt that

Love comes in many disguises and in many forms. We can love our best friend, the pet who dies under the wheel of a car or truck, the brother who takes too many drugs, the soldier who does not come back from war. There is the love of someone who betrays you to another friend or uses you for a test in school, a job or money. Each one of those hurts are pains that crawl under the skin and end up in the heart and nest there never to leave for the time you spend here on earth.

There is something that is worse and some of us have seen it. There are those who never feel love, never feel the pain of losing that love and who take but never give. That person, and they exist, would not enjoy this poem by Pablo Neruda. He or she would never enjoy and understand the pain through the sorrow. They would not understand that you just go on and the love that you feel for someone never goes away and stays in the heart forever.

I knew a friend that said that one loves through the different lives we live and that we never forget those people we love in past lives. We sometimes yearn and seek them out in our other lives and often find them. I like to think we do. We whirl and live in our lives and then our fingers reach out and find the ones we loved once before and then we connect once more. Sometimes, that connection is brief and sometimes it goes from one life to another.

Another friend says love is the only reality. I like having friends like that. They teach me many things when I am feeling down. Pablo Neruda teaches me too through his poetry.