I like you calm as if you were absent

Neruda is not a poet any more. He has become the permanent poster on the literature-world's page-3. He is like the minx shawl that everybody loves to flaunt, yet very few can afford. Economies of scale have forced an aura of affordability on him, he has entered via the route of liberalization, a luxury brand we take pride in saying is available next door. And by that, we, or at least a lot of us, seem to diminish him. He is mentioned much more than he is understood. He is invoked much more than he is truly appreciated. But then...

Neruda is the poet. He who always wrote in green ink. He didn't need the allegory. He was destined to be evergreen from the moment he wrote "Under your skin, the moon is alive.."  or even before that. I don't know which side of the previous paragraph I belong to. I guess I usually take solace in the fact that if I can keep looking at him thus mesmerized through the veils of translation, I'd have been much more taken without it.

I like you calm, as if you were absent,

and you hear me far-off, and my voice does not touch you.

It seems that your eyelids have taken to flying:

it seems that a kiss has sealed up your mouth.

Since all these things are filled with my spirit,

you come from things, filled with my spirit.

You appear as my soul, as the butterfly’s dreaming,

and you appear as Sadness’s word.

I like you calm, as if you were distant,

you are a moaning, a butterfly’s cooing.

You hear me far-off, my voice does not reach you.

Let me be calmed, then, calmed by your silence.

Let me commune, then, commune with your silence,

clear as a light, and pure as a ring.

You are like night, calmed, constellated.

Your silence is star-like, as distant, as true.

I like you calm, as if you were absent:

distant and saddened, as if you were dead.

One word at that moment, a smile, is sufficient.

And I thrill, then, I thrill: that it cannot be so. 

(Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto aka Pablo Neruda)