Twenty love poems and a song of despair: Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda, a Nobel prize winning Chilean poet had penned down his feelings towards love and despair in an explicit way in his book titled Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. The poems were originally written by him in Spanish and it was later translated to English by poet W. S. Merwin. 

The book consists twenty poems (as the name suggests) and at the end comes a beautiful song that fills the heart with feelings that are difficult to express. Words of the poem lays a hand on the senses of a human being and ushers in love and sorrow at the very outset.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair begins with the lines describing the body of a woman in an exquisite way. Words of the lines are very exotic as he says 'Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs, / you look like a world, lying in surrender. / My rough peasant's body digs in you / and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.' The poems go on exploring the journey of a person through the waves of love, sorrow and pain.

Neruda charts the oceanic movements of passion, repeatedly summoning imagery of the sea and weather: 'On all sides I see your waist of fog, / and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours; / my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests / in you with your arms of transparent stone.' He has beautifully (not to mention exotically) mixed the nature with the way he feels love. 

In the end comes a song which clouds the mind and takes its reader on a ride to the heartbroken fairyland. His words brings out the sorrow that try to remain hidden at the deepest and the darkest corners of our heart and keeps us reeling. Pain starts to flow in the veins as the mind begins to imagine the world through the eyes of the poet.