The Yellow Heart

by Pablo Neruda

Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda explored many schools of thought, poetic styles, and voices, but his passion lay in finding and improvising upon basic rhythms of perception to reveal unspoken and unspeakable truths. Copper Canyon Press has published seven volumes of Neruda's poetry. Six volumes were translated by William O'Daly and one volume of poems was translated by James Nolan

"William O'Daly's introduction, The Improvisational Spirit of Pablo Neruda,' is an excellent discussion of Neruda's later poetry, much of which was published after his death. O'Daly's translations capture both the spirit and the feeling of the original and this volume is thus an extremely worthwhile addition to collections of contemporary poetry."- Choice

Other titles by Pablo Neruda available from
The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon Press), 1-55659-041-5 PB 1-55659-040-7 HC
Ceremonial Songs (Latin American Literary Review Press), 0-935480-80-3 PB
Neruda at Isla Negra (White Pine Press), 1-877727-83-0 PB
Neruda's Garden (Latin American Literary Review Press), 0-935480-68-4 PB
The Sea and the Bells (Copper Canyon Press), 1-55659-019-9 PB
The Separate Rose (Copper Canyon Press), 0-914742-88-4 PB
Still Another Day (Copper Canyon Press), 0-914742-77-9 PB
Stones of the Sky (Copper Canyon Press), 1-55659-007-5 PB 1-55659-006-7 HC
Windows That Open Inward (White Pine Press), 1-877727-89-X PB
Winter Garden , (Copper Canyon Press), 0-914742-93-0 PB 0-914742-99-X HC

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Latin American

124 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Pablo Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in 1904 in Parral, Chile, was a poet, diplomat, and politician, widely considered one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. From an early age, he showed a deep passion for poetry, publishing his first works as a teenager. He adopted the pen name Pablo Neruda to avoid disapproval from his father, who discouraged his literary ambitions. His breakthrough came with Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 1924), a collection of deeply emotional and sensual poetry that gained international recognition and remains one of his most celebrated works.
Neruda’s career took him beyond literature into diplomacy, a path that allowed him to travel extensively and engage with political movements around the world. Beginning in 1927, he served in various consular posts in Asia and later in Spain, where he witnessed the Spanish Civil War and became an outspoken advocate for the Republican cause. His experiences led him to embrace communism, a commitment that would shape much of his later poetry and political activism. His collection España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts, 1937) reflected his deep sorrow over the war and marked a shift toward politically engaged writing.
Returning to Chile, he was elected to the Senate in 1945 as a member of the Communist Party. However, his vocal opposition to the repressive policies of President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla led to his exile. During this period, he traveled through various countries, including Argentina, Mexico, and the Soviet Union, further cementing his status as a global literary and political figure. It was during these years that he wrote Canto General (1950), an epic work chronicling Latin American history and the struggles of its people.
Neruda’s return to Chile in 1952 marked a new phase in his life, balancing political activity with a prolific literary output. He remained a staunch supporter of socialist ideals and later developed a close relationship with Salvador Allende, who appointed him as Chile’s ambassador to France in 1970. The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized for the scope and impact of his poetry. His later years were marked by illness, and he died in 1973, just days after the military coup that overthrew Allende. His legacy endures, not only in his vast body of work but also in his influence on literature, political thought, and the cultural identity of Latin America.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

After everything, I will love you
as if it were always before,
as if after so much waiting,
not seeing you and you not coming,
you were breathing
close to me forever.

[…]

Close to you is close to me
and your absence is far from everything

[…]

Since, without leaving the present
that is a fragile ring,
we touch the sand of yesterday
and on the sea, love reveals
a repeated fury.

[Monique Gerke · Rating 3 out of 5]

não foi a melhor seleção de poemas que li do Neruda.
Confesso que "Navegações e regressos" da editora folha contém poemas belíssimos, muitos que se tornaram meus preferidos da vida. Já esse livro deixou a desejar...mesmo assim, alguns poemas valeram a aquisição.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the days of the year to come
I will find a different hour:
an hour of cascading hair,
an hour that never passed:
as if time were broken there
and were opening a window: a hole
through which to slide us toward the deep.

Well, that day that contains that hour
will arrive and leave everything changed:
we won’t know whether yesterday has passed
or if what returns is what never happened.

When an hour falls from that clock
to the ground and nobody picks it up,
and at last we have time tied up,
O! we finally will know where our destinies
begin and where they end
because in the dead or extinguished fragment
we will see what composes the hours
as clearly as we view the leg of an insect.

And we will possess a satanic power:
to turn back or speed up the hours:
to arrive at birth or at death
like an engine stolen from the infinite.

[Isabel ✰ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I certainly wouldn't consider myself fluent in Spanish, but I have enough of it that reading Neruda's work in Spanish is a delight. The English translation is good, for the most part, but sometimes there's something about the Spanish that the translator just couldn't capture, and it felt like something hidden there for me.

[Khadija · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always count on Neruda's poetry to warm your yellow heart...


A N O T H E R

From so often traveling in a region
not charted in books
I grew accustomed to stubborn lands
where nobody ever asked me
whether I like lettuces
or if I prefer mint
like the elephants devour.
And from offering no answers,
I have a yellow heart.

*****

Please, I beg a sage tell me
where I can live in peace.

*****

friend. you must control yourself,
they advised me one by one,
they advised me little by little,
they advised me over and over,
until I'd forget myself
and I forgot myself all the time,
I forgot myself every day
until I no doubt became
horrifying and over the edge,
over the edge in spite of it all,
not acceptable and over the edge,
uncontrollably happy
in my rebellious excess.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW This book is proof of the shear talent and genius of Pablo Neruda in his later years. His reflections of life are both humorous and profoundly deep. Take for example, the nudist who lived 40 years nude in his apartment but died from a slip on his balcony while trying to catch his cat (The Hero) or the family so obsessed about dead family members that the ghosts begin to overtake the house. Morbid, yes but acutely funny. His philosophical views of life are his best in Time That Wasn't Lost and Enigma for the Worried.

The translations by William O'Daly are beautiful. excellent poetry.

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

After everything, I will love you
as if it were always before,
as if after so much waiting,
not seeing you and you not coming,
you were breathing
close to me forever.
[…]
Close to you is close to me
and your absence is far from everything
[…]
Since, without leaving the present
that is a fragile ring,
we touch the sand of yesterday
and on the sea, love reveals
a repeated fury.

[victória · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gostei de apenas dois poemas dessa coleção. Esse livro não foi pra mim, apesar de amar uma outra obra do autor.

[Suellen Rubira · Rating 5 out of 5]

O coração amarelo é um dos oito livros que Neruda escreveu, quase simultaneamente, antes de sua morte em 1973.

Ele é diferente de outros livros que li, porém, encontro nessa diferença uma nova beleza. Nos primeiros poemas - "Uno", "Otro", "Otro más" e "El Heroe", não pude não ver um eu-lirico Ulisses, preso à agulha que tece seu destino, criatura marítima que precisa reaprender a terra.

Outros poemas retomam o cotidiano, a amizade e a compreensão da vida, afinal são tempos sombrios que se acercam do Chile naquele período.

"Filosofia" é belíssimo, onde lemos, na última estrofe:

"No se saca nada volando
para escaparse de este globo
que te atrapó desde nacer.
Y hay que confesar esperando
que el amor y el entendimiento
vienen de abajo, se levantan
y crecen dentro de nosotros,
como cebollas, como encinas,
como galápagos o flores
como países, como razas,
como caminos y destinos."

O poema "Integraciones" deixou um verso ecoando aqui: "El miedo es también un camino".

Bravo.

[Imen Benyoub · Rating 3 out of 5]

Integrations

After everything, I will love you
as if it were always before,
as if after so much waiting,
not seeing you and you not coming,
you were breathing
close to me forever.

Close to me with your habits
with your color and your guitar
just as countries unite
in schoolroom lectures
and two regions become blurred
and there is a river near a river
and two volcanoes grow together.

Close to you is close to me
and your absence is far from everything
and the moon is the color of clay
in the night of quaking earth
when, in terror of the earth,
all the roots join together
and silence is heard ringing
with the music of fright.
Fear is also a street.
And among its terrifying stones

tenderness somehow is able to march
with four feet and four lips.
Since, without leaving the present
that is a fragile ring,
we touch the sand of yesterday
and on the sea, love reveals
a repeated fury.

[Mari Cestari · Rating 3 out of 5]

depois de visitar suas casas, a chascona (santiago) e a sebastiana (valparaiso), fiquei completamente obcecada por pablo neruda e resolvi comprar uma das suas coletâneas de poemas publicadas em português. vi que essa não é a favorita dos fãs, mas gostei muito de alguns dos poemas, como “el tiempo que no se perdio": perder hasta perder la vida // es vivir la vida y la muerte. quero ler mais neruda!

[Eduardo Peretto Scapini · Rating 2 out of 5]

ba, meio de saco cheio dessas poesias meio simplórias, sei lá, amo Pablo Neruda e o Livro das Perguntas é incrível, mas senti aqui uma coisa meio ok e aí? e não havia esse aí. Tipo no fim era só um monte de poema de amor e fraternidade que não pareciam ter grande peso para mim, acho que poesia me saturou quando se referem a estes temas.

[Harry Palacio · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very rare book by Pablo Neruda/ his aphorisms encapsulate the living and dying of suburbia in Latin America. The sinews of prosody are a séance for the ghosts of so many unspoken alliances. Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize, is a masterful writer in his own right

[Ix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully translated. The design of this book allows you to read the poem in the original language first amd then you can read/compare in English. So beautiful .
The poems are so casual, they give me a Cortazar vibe, here and there.

[Mariele Figueiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

lindo lindo lindo

[Cassidy Bolton]

not giving her a rating bc it was just not my taste but still quality and well-written. i loved that it had both english and spanish versions so you can read them together and see how it was originally designed! just not a big fan of poetry like this :/

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because I am unfinished and spindle-shaped
I had an understanding with needles
and then they were threading me
and never have finished.

That's why the love I give you,
my woman, my needle woman,
coils in your ear moistened
by the sea winds of Chillan
and uncoils in your eyes,
letting sadness drift.

I don't find pleasant the reasons
my fortune comes and goes,
my vanity escorted me
toward unheard heroics:
to fish beneath the sand,
to make pinholes in air,
to devour every bell.
As it was, I did little
or I did nothing, as it were,
bus enter for a guitar
and leave singing with her.

- One, pg. 3

* * *

From so often travelling in a region
not charted in books
I grew accustomed to stubborn lands
where nobody ever asked me
whether I like lettuces
or if I prefer mint
like the elephant devour.
And from offering no answers,
I have a yellow heart.

- Another, pg. 5

* * *

The truth of the green tree
is spring and of Earth's crust
is proven beyond a doubt:
the planets nourish us
despite eruptions
and the sea offers us fish
despite her quaking:
we are slaves of the earth
that is also governess of air.

Walking around an orange
I spent more than one life
echoing the earth's sphere:
geography and ambrosia:
juices the colour of hyacinth
and the white scent of woman
like blossoms of flour.

Nothing is gained by flying
to escape this globe
that trapped you at birth.
And we need to confess our hope
that understanding and love
come from below, climb
and grow inside us
like onions, or flowers,
like tortoise or flowers,
like countries, like races,
like roads and destinations.

- Philosophy, pg. 21

* * *

I love you, I love you, is my song
and here my silliness begins.

I love you, I love you my lung,
I love you, I love you my wild grapevine,
and if love is like wine:
you are my predilection
from your hands to your feet:
you are the wineglass of hereafter
and my bottle of destiny.

I love you forward and backwards,
and I don't have the tone or timbre
to sing you my song,
my endless song.

On my violin that sings out of tune
my violin declares,
I love you, I love you my double bass,
my sweet woman, dark and clear,
my heart, my teeth,
my light and my spoon,
my salt of the dim week,
my clear windowpane moon.

- Love Song, pg. 33

* * *

A cat has how many stars,
they asked me in Paris,
and I, tiger by tiger, began
to observe the constellations:
because two watching eyes
are pulsating of God
in the cat's cold eyes
and two lightning bolts in the tiger's.

But a star is the tail
of a cat bristled in the sky,
and a blue stone tiger is
blue night of Antofagasta.

Gray night of Antofagasta
rose over the corners
like a lofty defeat
over earth's exhaustion
and it's a fact, the desert
is the other face of night,
so infinite, unexplored,
like the nonexistence of the stars.

And between two goblets of the soul
the minerals sparkle.

I never saw a cat in the desert:
but the truth is, I never
slept with anybody

but the sands of night,
the circumstances of the desert
or the stars in space.

Because they aren't and they are
my humble discoveries.

- Night Cats, pg. 43-45

* * *

For the days of the year to come
I will find a different hour:
an hour of cascading hair,
an hour that never passed:
as if time were broken there
and were opening a window: a hole
through which to slide us toward the deep.

Well, that day that contains that hour
will arrive and leave everything changed:
we won't know whether yesterday has passed
or if what returns is what never happened.

When an hour falls from that clock
to the ground and nobody picks it up,
and at last we have time tied up,
Oh! we finally will know where our destinies
begin and where they end
because in the dead or extinguished fragment
we will see what composes the hours
as clearly as we view the leg of an insect.

And we will possess a satanic power:
to turn back or speed up the hours:
to arrive at birth or at death
like an engine stolen from the infinite.

- Enigmas for the Worried, pg. 59

* * *

One doesn't count illusions
or bitter realizations realizations,
no measure exists to count
what couldn't happen for us,
what circled like a bumblebee,
without our not noticing
what we were losing.

To lose until we lose our life
is to live our life and our death,
and nothing that passes on exists
that doesn't give constant proof
of the continuous emptiness of all,
the silence into which everything falls
and, finally, we fall.

Oh! what came so close
that we were never able to know.
Oh! what was never able to be
that maybe could have been.

So many wings flew around
the mountains of sorrow
and so many wheels beat
the highway of our destiny,
we had nothing left to lose.

And our weeping ended.

- Time That Wasn't Lost, pg. 69

* * *

I celebrate the virtues and vices
of suburban middle-class people
who have bought their refrigerator
and position colourful umbrellas
near the garden that longs for a pool:
for my middle-class brother
this principle of supreme luxury:
what you are and what I am, and we go on deciding
the real truth in this world.

The truth of that dream we buy on credit
of not going to the office on Saturday, at last,
and the merciless bosses whom the worker
manufactures in indivisible granaries
where executioners were always born
and grow up and always multiply.

We, heroes and poor devils,
the feeble, the braggarts, the unfinished,
and capable of everything impossible
as long as it's not seen of heard,
Don Juans, women and men, who come and go
with the fleeting passage of a runner
or of a shy hotel for travelers.
And we with our small vanities,
our controlled hunger for climbing
and getting as far as everybody else has gotten
because it seems that is the way of the world:

an endless track of champions
and in a corner we, forgotten
maybe because of everybody else,
since they seemed so much like us
until they were robbed of their laurels,
their medals, their titles, their names.

- Suburbs, pg. 75-77

[Selaserviette · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those volumes I know I will revisit multiple times, not out of nostalgia. Neruda's reputation in the US is mostly as an erotic poet and for that one memeified - if, granted, very good - line, "I want to do to you what spring does to the cherry trees." This, it turns out, is deeply wrong, not least because even in his most famous volume of love poetry - which isn't really "erotic poetry" as such at all, except I guess insofar as poetry can be about sex and intimacy - and which, by the way, is not this volume - you can feel the anxiety of modernism, the consciousness of style, meaning, the relationship of writer to subject, the irreducibility of an identity that also includes one's public image. Meanwhile, this volume feels so quintessentially modern socialist poetry - with all the things I like about that, and all the ways that it is difficult, and makes me feel, not stupid, but as if I want to sit up straighter, try a little harder, learn a little more, come back, do better, read better, know better.

[Reem Rafei · Rating 3 out of 5]

The truth of the green tree
in spring and of Ea h's crust is proven beyond a doubt: the planets nourish us despite eruptions
and the sea offers us sh despite her quaking:
we are slaves of the ea h that is also governess of air.
Walking around an orange
I spent more than one life echoing the ea h's sphere: geography and ambrosia: juices the color of hyacinth and the white scent of woman like blossoms of our.
Nothing is gained by ying
to escape this globe
that trapped you at birth.
And we need to confess our hope that understanding and love come from below, climb
and grow inside us
like onions, like oak trees, like tortoises or flowers, like countries, like races, like roads and destinations.

[Camila · Rating 4 out of 5]

O Coração Amarelo, de Pablo Neruda, é um livro póstumo. Os poemas reunidos nesta obra demonstram o sentimento de tristeza e melancolia do autor às vésperas do golpe militar do Chile. Curiosamente, o poeta chileno faleceu em 23 de setembro de 1973, apenas 12 dias após o golpe militar do Chile. O título do livro representa toda a angústia e tristeza do poeta.

O livro é curto - composto de 21 poemas - e de fácil entendimento. Recomendo a leitura!

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desde muito nova quis ler pablo neruda, com dois eventos que me marcaram muito pra essa vontade surgir: o carteiro e o poeta e evandro teixeira.
Quando achei dois de seus livros em um sebo fiquei feliz da vida, porque por incrível que pareça, não se vende tantas edições de neruda por aí.
Agora que li nem sei o que dizer, só fica a sensação de estar sozinha em uma ilha com um tempo fechado pensando em mulheres que nunca tive

[Barbara Sibbald]

Pablo Neruda was dying of prostate cancer in 1972/3 as he wrote the 21 poems in this last volume of his work. Neruda wrote poetry for more than 50 years he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1971)

He was born in rural Chile in1904. His mother died two months after his birth and his father, a railway worker, opposed his writing. Fortunately, his teacher, the poet Gabriela Mistral, encouraged his writing. His second book, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair¸ marked him as an important Chilean poet. He served as a Chilean counsel throughout Southeast Asia and Spain, where he favoured the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and was dismissed. Back in Chile, he joined the Communist party, became a senator in 1945 and was nominated for president in 1971; he withdrew in favour of Salvador Allende. He died in 1973, 12 days after the US-backed military coup.

What was important to him was to make experiences new, and to improvise, like jazz. Neruda noted that “there arises an insight which the poet must learn... There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are.” In O’Daly’s introduction to the poems, he writes that “Neruda spent the last forty years of his life making himself dangerous with his poetry…. He came to see poetry as a moral act, with personal and communal responsibilities.”
Neruda encouraged humanity to cease its abuses, but found he too was culpable. This contradiction is explored in The Yellow Heart, which encompasses an impressive variety of forms: allegories, love songs, personae, celebrations and laments, and even self-parodies. This volume begins with Neruda’s view of himself as a man woven by women’s love and subject to his weaknesses. He then does a deep dive into unanswerable questions and emerges to view the effect of the consequences of our action on the community. It’s often playful and irreverent even though he’s confronting his own mortality. A wonderful book.
My favourite poems include: "Philosophy", "I still get around", "Another thing" and "Suburbs".

[Ana Júlia H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Me suceden tan pocas cosas
que debo contar y contarlas.”

Querido livro que compramos para presentear uma amiga querida depois de uma viagem com meu amor à Cidade Maravilhosa!
¡ e que dias maravilhosos!!

“De cuando en cuando soy feliz!”

amo como o destino colocou exatamente esse livro na nossa frente nessa viagem. nada mais condizente do que um livro de poemas tão sensíveis e bem escritos que aborda, dentre vários temas, o amor, a passagem do tempo e a importância de estar presente, de nossos companheiros e sermos nós mesmos.

“Y de tanto no responder
tengo el corazón amarillo.”

“Ay! lo que estuvo tan cerca
sin que pudiéramos saber.
Ay! lo que no podía ser
cuando tal vez podía ser.”

“pero, cómo evitarle al día
el crepúsculo inevitable?”

Essa viagem me trouxe muitas reflexões sobre o que quero levar para minha vida, que tipo de vida quero, quem quero ser nessa vida. E esse livro parece conversar exatamente com esses pensamentos.

“Porque así no son y así son
mis pobres averiguaciones.”

(e agora trechos maiores que também amei::

“Por incompleto y fusiforme
yo me entendí con las agujas
y luego me fueron hilando
sin haber nunca terminado.
Por eso el amor que te doy
mi mujer, mi mujer aguja,
se enrolla en tu oreja mojada por el vendaval de Chillan
y se desenrolla en tus ojos
desatando melancolías.”

“Después de todo te amaré
como si fuera siempre antes
como si de tanto esperar
sin que te viera ni llegaras
estuviera eternamente
respirando cerca de mí.”

((Off: a única coisa que achei ruim foi a tradução de alguns poemas 🥴 alguns literalmente deixaram o verbo em espanhol mesmo e quem não entende que se vire p entender o significado 😶… aí não, sabe kkkk!! Mas os em espanhol queridos demais amo

[Michaela Priddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 3.8

"That's why the love I give you,
my woman, my needle woman,
coils in your ear moistened
by the sea winds of Chillán
and uncoils in your eyes,
letting sadness drift"

"And from offering no answers,
I have a yellow heart"

"Pure faith cannot withstand
the assaults of winter"

"Nothing is gained by flying
to escape this globe
that trapped you at birth.
And we need to confess our hope
that understanding and love
come from below, climb
and grow inside us
like onions, like oak trees,
like tortoises or flowers,
like countries,
like races,
like roads and destinations"

"You must control yourself, sir,
friend, you must control yourself,
they advised me one by one,
they advised me little by little,
they advised me over and over,
until I'd forget myself
and I forgot myself all the time"

"I love you, I love you, is my song
and hear my silliness begins."

"And if love is like wine:
you are my predilection"

"It's a fact, the desert
is the other face of night,
so infinite, unexplored,
like the non-existence of the stars"

"But the truth is, I never
slept with anybody
but the sands of night,
the circumstances of the desert
or the stars in space."

"I gathered up my choices,
renounced what wasn't mine
and found at my feet and with my eyes
the abundances of autumn"

"The flash taught me calm,
not to lose lights in the sky,
to search inside of myself
for the galleries of Earth"

"Because I arrived at the crossroads
from a complicated destination,
when ticking clocks fade away
and the sky tumbles across the sky
until the dying day
takes the moon for a walk"

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet one more fine translation by William O'Daly of the late work of Pablo Neruda.

This collection of a sort of magical surrealism displays Neruda's social and political commentary partly hidden by personal mythologies and ironic treatments of the "poet" himself and other actors. Despite the humor, or perhaps because f it, there is a poignancy to the poems and indeed the collection as a whole.

Neruda knew his cancer was going to kill him soon. And he had watched a his hopes for Chile were destroyed by the cancer of CIA-supported Fascism.

His biting satire mocks those middle class suburbanites who buy and buy and still die, and all those who fall again and again for

an endless track of champions
and in a corner we, forgotten
maybe because of everybody else,
since they seemed so much like us
until they were robbed of their laurels,
their medals, their titles, their names.

This passage has echoes of the Martin Niemöller poem:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Nonetheless, there is a forgiveness--for himself and for all the other flawed and fearful antiheroes of his poems. And he himself, at last "turn(s) toward my truth/because I am lacking a life."

A collection to be read and reread.

[Rosalynd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lindo, no era lo que esperaba, pero estuvo lindo. Me sorprendió para bien. Lo que más me gustó, fue la escritura, frases muy fuertes y concisas.

...
de tanto no responder
tengo el corazón amarillo.
.
la buena fe no resiste
las embestidas del invierno.
.
De cuando en cuando soy feliz!
.
Después de todo te amaré
como si fuera siempre antes
.
Cerca de ti es cerca de mí
y lejos de todo es tu ausencia
.
me remito a mi verdad
porque me falta una mentira.
.
estaba lloviendo ceniza
por voluntad de los volcanes
.
a juzgar por los periodistas
en el cielo estaban los justos
y en la calle los asesinos.
.
Celebro las virtudes y los vicios
de pequeños burgueses suburbanos

[Naomi Ayala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Among the last books Neruda wrote (published posthumously), *The Yellow Heart* is playful and irreverent, and sometimes even humorous. In his introduction, translator William O’Daly writes about Neruda’s improvisational spirit. These poems stand out on that front. They have that edge that make improvisations feel so alive, and this is to me what distinguishes these poems from other Neruda works. It holds true for even the handful of very serious poems in the book. Considering all that was going on in Chile at the time and in Neruda’s body, it's a courageous heart that ventures forth to play and explore no matter the circumstances.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-reading this as an adult, it is not my favorite of Neruda's works, though there are still numerous moments of the insight and beauty that I associate with Neruda. These poems written late in his life are reflective, wistful, and often surprisingly playful. It's painful to think of what was so soon to come when these poems were written, both for Neruda and his country; that colors them for me, perhaps unfairly so.

O'Daly's translation though is wonderful, unfussy and precise.

[Roselyn Blonger · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Cuando en el río navegable
navegaba como los cisnes
puse en peligro la barcaza
y produje tan grandes olas
con mis estrofas vendavales
que caímos todos al agua."

No creo que sea de los mejores trabajos del autor, en especial porque se sintió casi como un diario de recuerdos personales que como una declaración de sentimientos universales. Estoy un poco decepcionada.

No lo recomiendo.

[Jere. · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 ☆

No me gustó. :(
Solo marqué cuatro cosas.

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Por incompleto y fusiforme yo me entendí con las agujas y luego me fueron hilando sin haber nunca terminado.

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y me remito a mi verdad porque me falta una mentira.y me remito a mi verdad porque me falta una mentira.

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Penosa vida que arrastró mi amigo desinteresado.

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Y me dejó —triste de mí— hablando solo en el camino.