Pablo Neruda: When I die I want your hands on my eyes

When I die I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind,
for you to smell the sea that we loved together
and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked.

I want for what I love to go on living
and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything,
for that, go on flowering, flowery one,

so that you reach all that my love orders for you,
so that my shadow passes through your hair,
so that they know by this the reason for my song.

        --Pablo Neruda, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Cien Sonetos de Amor. Plaza y Janés. Ave Fénix 205-2. Sexta edición, junio 1998.

        LXXXIX

Cuando yo muera quiero tus manos en mis ojos:
quiero la luz y el trigo de tus manos amadas
pasar una vez más sobre mí su frescura:
sentir la suavidad que cambió mi destino.

Quiero que vivas mientras yo, dormido, te espero,
quiero que tus oídos sigan oyendo el viento,
que huelas el aroma del mar que amamos juntos
y que sigas pisando la arena que pisamos.

Quiero que lo que amo siga vivo
y a ti te amé y canté sobre todas las cosas,
por eso sigue tú floreciendo, florida,

para que alcances todo lo que mi amor te ordena,
para que se pasee mi sombra por tu pelo,
para que así conozcan la razón de mi canto.

Comments

[Paige]

Beautiful! I almost cryed when i read it...I love your poems Pablo...brava! :]

[Sean B]

This poem is astoundingly beautiful. Morten Lauridsen set the text, its called Soneto de la noche. The poem is full of such depth and passion.

[K. M. Sanderson]

In the sheet music for Lauridsen's setting of this poem, a note appended to the first three words, "Cuando yo muero," says that "Neruda specifically and intentionally uses "muero" instead of "muera" in this poem. Can anyone tell a linguistically challenged reader/singer what difference this makes? And what Neruda might have intended by insisting on "muero" rather than "muera"?

[Sedulia]

"Cuando yo muera" has the verb in the subjunctive tense-- or here you might call it a speculative tense: "someday if I am dying...." But instead Neruda uses "muero" "I die" as in, his death will definitely happen, and when it does....

It's a bit obscure to us English-speakers. Our subjunctive has mostly died out. It's like the difference between "if he were" and "if he was."

[cnelson]

As a spanish graduate and a singer, I have to disagree with KM Sanderson. Cuando me muero can only mean "when I die (on a regular basis) and not that his death will def happen. Subjunctive means that regardless of whether or not he intends to die, he has not done so , therefore it HAS to remain subjunctive. I think Laurdison changed it simply because poetically "me muero sounds better with the Cuando.. both letters o flowing more freely