Who Am I? For I Am Many…

I just read Pablo Neruda’s poem We Are Many and I absolutely love this poem. I, like many others, I believe, can relate to this poem. Neruda explores how we all have different sides of us. After reading the poem and reflecting on it I thought of different times in my life where I wanted to be one way and acted another just like Neruda writes about in lines 5-8 “when everything seems to be set to show me off as intelligent, the fool I always keep hidden takes over all that I say”.

I also think Neruda captured pure self dissection. In the lines 21-24 where he writes “all the books I read are full of dazzling heroes, always sure of themselves, I die with envy of the” Neruda captured the feelings of admiration's of those who are great. I don’t know about anyone else but, I often envy those “heroes” of the world, the super and the every day. All in all the message I perceived from this poem is “who am I, for I am many”…

After reading this poem I decided to Google some other works by Neruda and here is a poem I found that I believe is probably one of the best poems I have ever read.

Tonight I can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered,
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her,
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
That night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. 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 with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that is certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes,

I no longer love her, that is certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer,
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Submitted by Samantha Graziano