45 famous sad poems (and their meaning)

Pablo Neruda, Federico García Lorca, Mario Benedetti, Alfonsina Storni and many more are poets who have in common an interest in dark and sad themes, such as heartbreak, goodbyes and death.

His poetic works are tremendously extensive, and when read they invite us to make a deep reflection on our lives, understanding that sadness is something we cannot escape from and that it even helps us to move on.

Next we will discover 40 famous sad poems, understanding what they mean and making us remember bitter memories, but necessary.

Related article: "Top 30 Short Poems (By Famous & Anonymous Authors)"

Famous sad poems that you should know, and their interpretation

Thousands of poems have been written conveying feelings of sadness and bitterness, but if we must choose between a few few, the forty that come next are, without a doubt, those that should be known in the field of poetry and Arts.

1. Alba (Federico Garcia Lorca)

my oppressed heart

Feel next to the dawn

the pain of their love

And the dream of the distance.

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The light of dawn carries

hotbeds of nostalgia

And sadness without eyes

From the marrow of the soul.

The great tomb of the night

Her black veil lifts

To hide with the day

The immense starry summit.

What will I do on these fields

picking up children and branches

surrounded by the dawn

And full of night the mistress!

What will I do if you have your eyes

Dead to the clear lights

And you must not feel my flesh

The warmth of your looks!

why did i lose you forever

On that clear afternoon?

Today my chest is dry

Like a faded star.

Federico García Lorca represented sadness very intensely in this beautiful poetry. A heart sad at the distance of the loves it longs for, that remembers them full of nostalgia, bitter as a night without stars, like a chest without flame.

2. Curriculum (Mario Benedetti)

The story is very simple

you are born

contemplates troubled

the blue red of the sky

the bird that migrates

the clumsy beetle

that his shoe will crush

brave

you suffer

claim for food

and out of habit

by obligation

cry clean of guilt

exhausted

until sleep disqualifies him

you love

he transfigures and loves

for such a provisional eternity

that even pride becomes tender

and the prophetic heart

turns to rubble

you learn

and use what you have learned

to slowly become wise

to know that at last the world is this

at its best a nostalgia

at its worst a helpless

and always always

a mess

you die.

This poem by Mario Benedetti is a sad but trustworthy summary of our lives. Our lives can be summed up, as the title of the poem suggests, in a resume, a working life trajectory. We are born, we grow, we train if we can, we work, we work and we work more to be able to survive, to be able to eat and have a house. When we find out that our life is gone or when we finally have the opportunity to be able to live, to enjoy the only life that has been given to us, we die.

3. To the sad (Jorge Luis Borges)

There's what it was: the third sword

Of the Saxon and the iron meter of it,

the seas and the islands of exile

of the son of Laertes, the golden

Persian Moon and the Endless Gardens

of philosophy and history,

The sepulchral gold of memory

and in the shade the smell of jasmine.

And none of that matters. the resigned

verse exercise does not save you

neither the waters of sleep nor the star

that in the devastated night forgets the dawn.

A single woman is your care,

Same as the others, but what is she?

Jorge Luís Borges brings us a beautiful and complex poetic work, in which he comes to say that there are moments when nothing matters, and in the worst cases, things will happen that will never matter to us again. This poem is a dagger to the heart for those who feel alone.

4. To faint, to dare, to be furious (Lope de Vega)

faint, dare, be furious

rough, tender, liberal, elusive,

encouraged, deadly, deceased, alive,

loyal, treacherous, cowardly and courageous;

not find outside the good center and rest,

appear happy, sad, humble, arrogant,

angry, brave, fugitive,

satisfied, offended, suspicious;

fleeing the face to the clear disappointment,

drink poison for soft liquor,

forget the benefit, love the damage;

believe that a heaven in a hell fits,

give life and soul to a disappointment;

This is love, whoever tasted it knows it.

Lope de Vega reminds us that life is a roller coaster of emotions, although, of course, in his time such a fairground attraction did not exist. Even so, it is understood that it describes how life is full of all kinds of feelings, many of them sad, inevitable. We are happy, but also sad, we are loyal, but traitors, harsh and tender... In short, we are contradictions of ourselves.

5. I have plenty of heart (Miguel Hernández)

Today I am without knowing I do not know how

today I am only for sorrows,

Today I don't have friends

today I just crave

to rip my heart out

and put it under a shoe.

Today that dry thorn sprouts,

today is the crying day of my kingdom,

Today I download discouragement on my chest

discouraged lead.

I can't with my star.

And I seek death by hands

looking fondly at the knives,

and I remember that companion axe,

and I think of the highest bell towers

for a somersault serenely.

If it was not because... I do not know why,

my heart would write a last letter,

a letter that I have stuck there,

I would make an inkwell of my heart,

a fountain of syllables, of goodbyes and gifts,

and there you stay, I would tell the world.

I was born in a bad moon.

I have the penalty of a single penalty

that is worth more than all the joy.

A love has left me with arms down

and I cannot tend them towards more.

Don't you see my mouth how disappointed,

what dissatisfied my eyes?

The more I contemplate myself, the more I grieve:

cut this pain with what scissors?

yesterday, tomorrow, today

suffering for everything

my heart, melancholic fishbowl,

prison of dying nightingales.

I have plenty of heart.

Today, discourage me,

I the heartiest of men,

and for the most, also the most bitter.

I don't know why, I don't know why or how

I spare my life every day.

Whose heart has not ached when he has loved someone unrequited? Miguel Hernández exemplifies for us with this poetry the suffering of seeing someone we love in the arms of another person, or that they simply do not love us, or they do not know that we love them but we have not loved them either saying. Be that as it may, suffering is there, embittering our existence.

6. The ancient night of erections flies (Rafael Alberti)

The ancient night of erections flies,

Dead, like hands, at dawn.

A prolonged carnation deteriorates,

Until they turn pale, the lemons.

Against the dark they oscillate spurs,

And plungers of a blue skimmer

They move between the mixing blood

A spill roll of buckets.

When the sky rips off your armor

And in a wandering nest of garbage

An eye screams at the newly opened sun.

Future in the entrails the wheat dreams,

Calling the man to be a witness...

But already the man next to him sleeps dead.

The sadness in this poem by Rafael Alberti is not explained clearly, but that is the grace of the Spanish bard. This composition represents in a somewhat surreal way the bitterness, a bitterness that, as described, if we transformed it into a painting, it would clearly become a painting by Salvador Dalí.

7. Slow morning (Dámaso Alonso)

slow morning,

blue sky,

Green field,

winery land.

And you, tomorrow, that you take me.

cart

too slow,

wagon too full

of my new grass,

trembling and fresh,

that has to arrive —without realizing it—

dry.

Dámaso Alonso conveys to us with this brief and beautiful poetry the longing for the simple past. The vigorous youth is transformed, little by little, into old age, just as happens to spring grass, green and shiny, when summer comes, dry and dull.

8. Blessed (Beloved Nervo)

Bless you, because you made me

love death, which before feared.

Since you left my side,

I love death when I'm sad;

if I'm happy, even more.

In another time, his icy sickle

he gave me terrors; Today, she is a friend.

And I feel so maternal...

You performed such a miracle.

God bless you! God bless you!

Amado Nervo tells us about the desire we have to die when something serious happens to us with the person we love. When someone we love very much leaves our side, the unease that invades us makes us want something that we were so afraid of, death, to become our friend.

9. Astral Solitude (Double Zero)

calm becomes cold

of the absolute cosmos

and in the dark vineyard

future stops.

among the night they shine

twinkling stars

and the dancing moon

life is silvering

The smoke of the cigarette

it leaves my mouth

to open in the leaves

stained with their grey.

between this distance

the stars go slowly

my swift thoughts

and you are not here.

I search the universe

memories with your face

that penetrate me like

a crimson bull

Everything is done in silence

as in silence they are born

sunsets in the afternoon

and the April clouds.

In silence I sink

but my heart screams

getting on my knees

of my soul, its confinement.

my life broke

the story is over

and there are no colorados

for this color

Poetry that aspires to be sad cannot miss the very human feeling of loneliness. Double Zero presents us in this poem as consciousness is a double-edged sword, which can make us feel especially bad in the unpleasant but obvious existential void. This void can only be combated when we are close to people we love and who, in theory, love us, but when we leave it becomes clear how alone we are.

10. Pain (Alfonsina Storni)

I would like this divine October afternoon

stroll along the distant shore of the sea;

that the golden sand, and the green waters,

and the pure skies would see me pass.

To be tall, proud, perfect, I would like,

like a roman, to match

With the big waves, and the dead rocks

and the wide beaches that surround the sea.

With the slow step, and the cold eyes

and the silent mouth, let me go;

watch the blue waves break

against pimples and not blink;

see how birds of prey eat

small fish and not wake up;

to think that the fragile boats could

sink into the waters and not sigh;

to see that it advances, the throat in the air,

The most beautiful man does not want to love...

Lose your gaze, distractedly,

lose it and never find it again:

and, erect figure, between sky and beach,

feel the perennial oblivion of the sea.

What can be understood from this beautiful composition by Alfonsin Stormi is not exactly such a beautiful message. The meaning of this poem can be interpreted as the desire for death, letting oneself be carried away by the currents to take it to the depths of the sea and, from there, never return. Cease to exist, finding the long-awaited calm and insouciance.

11. Farewell (Jorge Luis Borges)

Between my love and I they have to rise

three hundred nights like three hundred walls

and the sea will be a magic between us.

There will only be memories.

Oh well deserved afternoon,

hopeful nights of looking at you,

fields of my way, firmament

What am I seeing and losing...

Ultimate as a marble

Your absence will sadden other afternoons.

Farewells are a very recurring theme in poetry with a sad air, and Jorge Luis Borges was not going to be the exception of vate that he wrote about it. Goodbyes are sad, especially if it is known that there are some that are the end points of a relationship, either by breakup or by death.

12. Ode to sadness (Pablo Neruda)

sadness, beetle,

with seven broken legs,

cobweb Egg,

busted rat,

bitch skeleton:

You don't come in here.

It doesn't happen.

go away

Comes back

to the south with your umbrella,

he comes back

to the north with your snake teeth.

Here lives a poet.

sadness cannot

enter through these doors.

through the windows

between the air of the world

the new red roses,

the embroidered flag

of the people and their victories.

You can not.

You don't come in here.

shake

your bat wings,

I will tread the feathers

that fall from your hand

I will sweep up the pieces

from your corpse to

the four corners of the wind,

I will twist your neck

I'll sew your eyes

i will cut your shroud

and I will bury, sadness, your gnawing bones

under the spring of an apple tree.

The great poet Pablo Neruda brought us this composition that hits deep in the heart, describing what sadness is. An emotion that, although it can appear in each person for the most varied reasons, its psychosomatic manifestation is very similar. It is like an insect, an animal that eats us from the inside, it hurts us.

13. You, who will never be (Alfonsina Storni)

Saturday was, and whim the kiss was given,

whim of a man, bold and fine,

but the masculine whim was sweet

to this my heart, winged wolverine.

Not that he believes, I don't believe, if inclined

on my hands I felt you divine,

and I got drunk. I understand that this wine

she is not for me, but she plays and rolls the dice.

I am that woman who lives alert,

you the tremendous man who wakes up

in a torrent that widens into a river

and more she curls as she runs and prunes.

Ah, I resist, but it has me all,

you, who will never be completely mine.

An unbalanced relationship is the one described in this poem. In the couple, man and woman are supposed to give the same, contribute in the same way. However, the poetess here complains that the man is not so invested, that he does not love her as much as she loves him.

14. Oblivion poem (José Ángel Buesa)

Watching the clouds go by, life went by,

and you, like a cloud, passed through my boredom.

And then your heart and mine were united,

as the edges of a wound are joined.

The last dreams and the first gray hairs

all beautiful things sadden with shadow;

and today your life and my life are like stars,

because they can be seen together, being so far away...

I well know that oblivion, like cursed water,

it gives us a deeper thirst than the thirst it quenches us,

But I'm so sure I can forget...

And I will look at the clouds without thinking that I love you

in the dull habit of an old sailor

who still feels, on dry land, the undulation of the sea.

José Ángel Buesa brings us this, one of his saddest poems, in which describes how two people came together in heart and soul. But the relationship broke down and, despite the fact that the presence of one has not left the other indifferent, and that they will always keep something of their relationship, oblivion comes to dominate them, to erase the other from one or the other shape.

15. Will (Concha Garcia)

my love two points, it fell

the will to remain, I go out

still threaded with your saliva and I

stun stop chasing you,

you who were a flame in the dark circle and warmth of a finger

certain stabbing madness, essay

nobleman who was characterized by the insistence

of the subject with an allegorical background,

very certain I stay where I am, what

is it further? what next

staying? I dissect my hands

so as not to have to scrutinize

with the senseless caresses. Have

to write yet another poem

my statement and a method

to forget your language

Concha García pours into this poem the pain of the absence of what she has had, that relationship that one day was and another is no more. The poem is a message of the radical nature of the ephemeral, of how our reality one day becomes a blurry memory.

16. This pain has become crying now (Jaime Sabines)

Crying has turned this pain now

and it is good that it is so.

Let's dance, let's love, Melibea.

Flower of this sweet wind that has me,

branch of my grief:

untie me, my love, leaf by leaf,

rock here in my dreams

I cover you like my blood, this is your cradle:

let me kiss you one by one

women you, woman, foam coral.

Rosario, yes, Dolores when Andrea,

let me cry and see you.

I've become crying just now

and I lull you, woman, she cries that she cries.

Jaime Sabines expresses an overwhelming pain in this poem. A sensitive soul explains how his world has been with women, the pain of his coming, staying and leaving.

17. Ballad (Gabriela Mistral)

He passed with another; I saw him go by.

The wind is always sweet

and the way in peace.

And these miserable eyes

they saw him go by!

He goes loving another

through the land in bloom.

He has opened the thorn;

pass a song

And he is loving another

for the land in bloom!

he kissed the other

seaside;

slipped on the waves

the orange blossom moon

And he did not smear my blood

the expanse of the sea!

he will go with another

for eternity.

There will be sweet skies.

(God willing to be silent.)

And he will go with another

for eternity!

This musical poem by Gabriela Mistral, marked by the sweetness with which a caress is produced, which touches our soul and inoculates us feelings of satisfaction and pleasure, in turn exposes the pain that we have all felt when seeing a person we love in the arms of other.

18. And look into each other's eyes (Luis García Montero)

The winds have passed

And looking into each other's eyes is not easy.

live this city

is to step on a garden of erasures,

the infected presence of what no longer exists,

of what was winter enclosure

or shelter from the sun,

theater of rains and acquaintances.

Go through the memory of the rooms

It's provoking the fog of interrogation.

And they shouldn't talk, but they cancel each other out

in a murky silence

that betrays the past of peaceful shadows,

the hurtful crystals through which order treads,

the bottles kept in empty messages.

because I turn off the hours

with the forgetfulness switch

and the footsteps rumble in the basement.

Imagine you, the room,

the keys in the door,

the heels that cross the aisle,

dry zipper,

and the body that offers no freedom,

but tiredness, too much heat,

foreseeable excuses.

That's how dreams come

Off-kilter martyrs of a maniacal heart.

The laws of honor and life have passed,

the best words,

And looking into each other's eyes is not easy.

Luis García Montero dilutes his own pain with suffering in general. His poetry seeks to dilute the poet's experience and the sense of "I" in the community, in the common pain of mortals.

19. The future (Julio Cortázar)

And I know very well that you will not be.

You won't be on the street

in the murmur that sprouts at night

of the lighting poles,

nor in the gesture of choosing the menu,

nor in the smile that soothes

the complete ones of the subways,

nor in borrowed books

nor in the until tomorrow.

You won't be in my dreams

at original destination

of my words,

you will not be in a telephone number

or in the color of a pair of gloves

or a blouse.

I will be angry my love

without it being for you,

and I will buy chocolates

but not for you

i will stand in the corner

to which you will not come,

And I'll say the words that are said

and I will eat the things that are eaten

and I will dream the things that are dreamed

and I know very well that you will not be,

not in here, jail

where I still hold you,

nor out there, this river of streets

and of bridges.

You will not be at all

you won't even be a memory

and when i think of you

i will think a thought

that darkly

she tries to remember you.

Julio Cortázar brings us a daily poetry of heartbreak, pain, absence and emptiness left by someone with whom we shared and lived everything. Loss is a sour, bitter emotion that is hard to undo. Our memory of him or her imprisons us, takes away our freedom.

20. I know that rats… (Margarita Laso)

I know the rats will bite my heart. but this is a farewell

I laughed and went

she-wolf

she-wolf in the dovecote

she-wolf in the dovecote of your panting

swishes and foams sprinkled the dawn of sweat

gasps your from dovecote he in loba

although

between squawks and cracks

between lumpy cooing

she-wolf

between pigeons in your panting

I say goodbye

canine grief I cover glass

tongues and phalanges I put out the fire

rings and pores to baked powder

this pup burns under the bubbles

so called howls invite the rats

they listen to his crackling chamise skin

her nails that scrape the crystalline zeal

the sphere of heat of its sheared leather invites them

odorous

I know they will bite my heart

plaintive

but i won't let you bite it

this is a farewell

Margarita Laso shares a sad poetry about separation and absence. The feelings of pain and suffering handled by the poetess are treated with unusual elegance and forcefulness.

21. Ars Magna (Leopoldo Maria Panero)

What is magic, you ask

in a dark room.

What is nothingness, you ask,

leaving the room.

And what is a man coming out of nowhere,

and returning alone to the room.

Leopoldo María Panero transmits to us in this poetry the feeling of being out of a relationship, which is now nothing, and return alone to daily life, to the new normality after having shared so much with someone who is no longer there.
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22. Silence (Octavio Paz)

As well as the background of the music

sprouts a note

That while it vibrates grows and thins

Until another music silences,

springs from the bottom of silence,

another silence, sharp tower, sword,

and rises and grows and suspends us

and while it rises they fall

memories, hopes,

the little lies and the big ones

and we want to scream and in the throat

the cry fades:

we lead to silence

where the silences silence.

In these verses Octavio Paz conveys great desolation to us, the pain of not finding a way to express everything his inner world, for words fall short when trying to express a whole torrent of emotionality.

23. Oh yeah! (Charles Bukowski)

There are worse things

than to be alone

but it often takes decades

realize it

and more often

when this happens

It's too late

and there is nothing worse

that

a too late.

Charles Bukowski leads us to wonder if there is anything worse than realizing, late, loneliness and fleeting passage through life. A life, a time that will not be recovered. Finding out how time passes generates us great existential anguish.

24. Rhyme XXX (Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer)

She showed a tear in her eyes

and to my lips a phrase of forgiveness...

She spoke her pride and wiped away her tears,

and the sentence on my lips expired.

I go one way, she another;

but thinking of our mutual love,

I still say: "Why was I silent that day?"

and she will say: "Why didn't I cry?"

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was one of the greatest representatives of the Golden Age of Spanish poetry. In this poem he condenses the anguish of love and heartbreak, breakup and forgiveness, the traumatic end of a relationship.

25. Eyes of yesterday (Juan Ramón Jiménez)

eyes that want

look happy

And they look sad!

oh no it's not possible

what an old wall

give new shine;

than a dry trunk

(open other sheets)

open other eyes

that these, that they want

look happy

and they look sad!

Alas, it is not possible!

The passage of time is a very recurring theme among the most embittered poems, but also undoubtedly more realistic. Juan Ramón Jiménez transmits to us in this poem the pain and melancholy looking towards his past idyllic, times like our happy childhood or when we were happy with our partner no longer they will return

26 Goodbye! (Alfonsina Storni)

Things that die never come back to life

things that die never come back.

The glasses are broken and the glass that remains

it is dust forever and ever will be!

When the buds fall from the branch

twice in a row they won't bloom...

The flowers cut off by the impious wind

they sell out forever, forever and ever!

The days that were, the days lost,

the inert days will no longer return!

How sad the hours that fell apart

under the wing of loneliness!

How sad the shadows, the disastrous shadows,

the shadows created by our wickedness!

Oh, things gone, things withered,

the celestial things that are like that!

Heart... silence... Cover yourself with sores...

-of infected sores- cover yourself with evil...

May everyone who arrives die when they touch you,

cursed heart that disturbs my eagerness!

Goodbye forever my sweeties all!

Farewell my joy full of goodness!

Oh, the dead things, the withered things,

the celestial things that never come back! …

Alfonsina Storni wants to make it clear to us that what is dead can no longer die. When a relationship breaks up, it will hardly go back to what it was. When a person dies, he will not be resurrected. What was once a happy experience of our lives will no longer happen again. The passage of time is something inevitable, something that we will always suffer.

27. Crying mouth, they call me (Jaime Sabines)

Crying mouth, they call me

your black pupils,

they claim me Your lips

without you they kiss me

How could you have

the same black look

with those eyes

What are you wearing now?

You smiled. What a silence,

what a lack of party!

How did I start looking for you?

in your smile, head

of Earth,

sad lips!

You don't cry, you wouldn't cry

even if you wanted to;

you have a dull face

of the blinds

you can laugh I let you

Laugh even if you can't.

A relationship comes to an end, tears come, sadness, trying to prevent the inevitable end from coming. But you can't avoid the inevitable. No matter how sad they both are, no matter how hard they try to fight to continue being one, sometimes they can't continue. The bitterness that Jaime Sabines wants to convey to us in this poem is well evident in each verse.

28. I am sad and my eyes do not cry (Juan Ramón Jiménez)

I'm sad, and my eyes don't cry

and I don't want anyone's kisses;

my serene look is lost

in the quiet end of the park.

Why do I have to dream of love

if the afternoon is dark and rainy

and no sighs or aromas come

in the quiet rounds of the air?

Sleepy hours have sounded;

there is only the immense landscape;

the slow herds have already gone;

smoke floats in the poor homes.

By closing my window in the shade,

a premiere shone in the crystals;

I'm sad, my eyes don't cry

I don't want anyone's kisses anymore!

I will dream of my childhood: it is time

of sleeping children; my mother

I rocked in her warm lap,

to the love of her radiant eyes;

and when the loving bell vibrates

of the hermitage lost in the valley,

my surrendered eyes were half open

to the mystery without evening light...

It is the shearing; it has sounded shearing

it has sounded in the peace of the air;

its cadences bring tears to these eyes

They don't want anyone's kisses.

May my tears flow! There are already flowers

there are already fragrances and songs; if someone

he has dreamed of my kisses, let him come

from his placid dream to kiss me.

And my tears run... They do not come...

Who will go for the sad landscape?

It only rings in the long silence

the bell that the angels ring.

Juan Ramón Jiménez wants to make us cry by reminding us that the past times were always happy. Not because they were really better than the current ones, but because our childish, jovial innocence filter that softened reality, made us think we were living in a sweet and warm dream permanent. A lie that fades when we grow up and find out the harsh reality.

29. The farewell (José Ángel Buesa)

I say goodbye and perhaps I still love you.

Maybe I won't forget you, but I say goodbye.

I don't know if you loved me... I don't know if I loved you...

Or maybe we loved each other too much.

This sad, passionate, and crazy love,

I planted it in my soul to love you.

I don't know if I loved you very much... I don't know if I loved you little;

But I do know that I will never love like this again.

I have your sleeping smile in my memory,

and my heart tells me that I will not forget you;

but, being left alone, knowing that I lose you,

maybe I start to love you like I never loved you.

I say goodbye to you, and perhaps, with this farewell,

my most beautiful dream dies inside me...

But I say goodbye for a lifetime,

Even if i think of you all my life.

José Ángel Buesa conveys to us the questions that we all ask ourselves when we break up with someone. Did we love each other? did you love me Or is it that we loved each other too much? Be that as it may, the relationship has broken down, it is the end of it. It hurts, but there is nothing more to do, apart from regretting it.

30. Trilce (Cesar Vallejo)

There is a place that I know

in this world, nothing less,

where we will never arrive

Where, even if our foot

came to give for an instant

It will be, in truth, like not being.

It is that place that you see

every time in this life,

walking, walking one in a row.

More here of myself and

my pair of buds, I have glimpsed it

always far from the destinations.

You can go on foot

or to pure feeling in hair,

that not even the seals arrive at it.

The tea-colored horizon

is dying to colonize

for your great Any part.

But the place that I know,

in this world, nothing less,

hombreado goes with the reverses.

Close that door

is ajar in the bowels

of that mirror. This? No; his sister.

It cannot be closed. I don't know

can never get to that place

where the latches go in branch.

This is the place that I know.

César Vallejo tries to describe to us what the afterlife is like, a place that cannot be visited while alive, that can only be visited by ceasing to be. The letters do not arrive, nor are they sent to us. Loved ones who go there don't come back.

31. I'm afraid (Pablo Neruda)

I'm afraid. The afternoon is gray and sadness

from heaven opens like a dead man's mouth.

My heart has a princess cry

forgotten in the depths of a deserted palace.

I'm scared -And I feel so tired and small

that I reflect the afternoon without meditating on it.

(In my sick head there will not fit a dream

just as there has not been a star in the sky.)

Yet in my eyes a question exists

and there is a scream in my mouth that my mouth does not scream.

There is no ear on earth that hears my sad complaint

abandoned in the middle of the infinite earth!

The universe dies of a calm agony

without the festival of the Sun or the green twilight.

Saturn agonizes like a pity of mine,

the Earth is a black fruit that the sky bites.

And through the vastness of the void they go blind

the afternoon clouds, like lost boats

to hide broken stars in their cellars.

And the death of the world falls on my life.

Pablo Neruda, like many poems that pour sadness and melancholy into his verses, talks to us about death. The fear of the other side, unknown and, at the same time, mysterious, has always been a recurring theme in the popular imagination and the great poets, as is the case of the Chilean, have been able to reflect it in poems such as this.
You may be interested in: "25 poems by Pablo Neruda that will fascinate you"

32. Oblivion (Carlos Medellín)

I forgot your name,

I don't remember

if you were called light or creeper,

but I know you were water

because my hands shake when it rains.

I forgot your face, your eyelash

and your skin through my busy mouth

when we fell under the cypresses

beaten by the wind,

but I know you were Luna

because when the night approaches

my eyes break

from wanting to see you at the window so much.

I forgot your voice, and your word,

but i know you were music

because when the hours dissolve

between the blood springs

my heart sings to you

Carlos Medellín tells us about how a one-night relationship, or a short space of time, is experienced. a unique, lucid and vivid experience but which, in turn, becomes blurred, its memory being exaggerated by the passage of time and, also, its melancholy.

33. The Wound (Luis Gonzaga Urbina)

What if it hurts? A bit; I confess

that you treacherously hurt me; more fortunately,

after the outburst of anger came a

sweet resignation... The excess has passed.

Suffer? Cry? Die? Who thinks of that?

Love is an importunate guest;

look at me how I am; already without any

sadness to tell you Kiss Me.

So; very good; forgive me, I was crazy;

you cured me -thank you-, and now I can

know what I imagine and what I touch:

In the wound you made put your finger;

what if it hurts? Yeah; it hurts a little,

but it does not kill the pain... Do not be afraid...

Another poem that talks about breakups. In this case, Luis Gonzaga Urbina speaks to us about forgiveness, of supplication for trying to make everything return to normal before the infidelity, not the carnal sense of the expression, but rather of trust and mutual support.

34. I realize that I miss you... (Jaime Sabines)

I realize that you miss me

and that I look for you among the people, in the noise,

but it's all useless.

when i'm left alone

I stay more than alone

only everywhere and for you and me.

I do nothing but wait.

Wait all day until you arrive.

Until I sleep

and you are not and you have not arrived

and i fall asleep

and terribly tired

asking.

Love, every day.

Here by my side, next to me, I need you.

you can start reading that

and when you get here start again.

Close these words like a circle

Like a hoop, roll it, light it up

These things circle me like flies, in my throat like flies in a jar.

I am ruined.

I'm broke in my bones

everything is gloom.

Jaime Sabines tells us about the absence of another person. When someone leaves our lives, for whatever reason, you can't help but feel a pain inside, anguish and a feeling of being ruined. That feeling, that feeling that one has been ruined, is not in a monetary sense, but rather emotional, of feeling how our inner world and our life in general collapses like a castle of playing cards

35. I hope (Mario Benedetti)

I wait for you when the night becomes day,

sighs of hopes already lost.

I don't think you're coming, I know

I know you won't come

I know that the distance hurts you,

I know the nights are colder

I know that you are no longer here.

I think I know everything about you.

I know that the day suddenly becomes night for you:

I know you dream of my love, but you don't say it

I know I'm an idiot waiting for you

Well, I know you won't come.

I wait for you when we look at the night sky:

you there, me here, longing for those days

in which a kiss marked the farewell,

Maybe for the rest of our lives.

It's sad to talk like that.

When the day turns to night,

And the Moon hides that sun so radiant.

I feel alone, I know

I never knew anything so much in my life,

I only know that I am very alone,

and that I'm not there.

My apologies for feeling this way,

My intention has never been to offend you.

I never dreamed of loving you

Not even with feeling like this.

My air goes away like water in desert.

My life is shortened because I do not carry you inside.

My hope of living is you

and I'm not there.

Why am I not there?, you ask yourself,

Why haven't I taken that bus that would take me to you?

Because the world that I lead here does not allow me to be there.

Every night I torture myself while thinking about you.

Why don't I just forget about you?

Why do not just live like that?

Why not just….

Mario Benedetti talks about waiting, waiting in his sense of waiting and, also, of hope. Hope waiting for someone loved to return, waiting with hope that he will return so that everything is resolved. We do not forget that person, therefore we continue to wait for him.

36. Indolence (Alfonsina Storni)

Despite myself I love you; you are so vain

as beautiful, and pride tells me, vigilant:

«For this you chose? Low taste is yours;

Don't sell yourself to anything, not even to a Roman profile»

And desire dictates me, dark and pagan,

to open a wide gash for you where your murmur

vital outside strained... Only dead my lullaby

sweeter wrapped you, looking for mouth and hand.

Salome revives? Are my gestures poorer?

These are bad times for tragic things.

I am the incomplete one who always lives her life.

Well, he doesn't lose his line for a Greek party

and to the indecisive, undulating chance, it folds

with distant eyes and distracted soul.

Another sad poem by Alfonsina Storni, a poet who has a wide repertoire of them. A woman loves a man, but in the same way that this man has his strengths, he also has his weaknesses, sometimes so serious and so many that it makes the woman question her own taste. But, you know, love is often blind and foolish.

37. End it all (Octavio Paz)

Give me, invisible flame, cold sword,

your persistent anger,

to end it all

oh dry world,

oh bled world,

to end it all.

Burn, gloomy, burn without flames,

dull and burning,

ashes and living stone,

shoreless desert.

Burns in the vast sky, slab and cloud,

under the blind light that collapses

between barren rocks.

It burns in the loneliness that undoes us,

burning stone land,

of frozen and thirsty roots.

Burn, hidden fury,

maddening ash,

burn invisible, burn

as the impotent sea breeds clouds,

waves like rancor and stony foams.

Between my delirious bones, it burns;

burns within the hollow air,

invisible and pure oven;

burns as time burns,

how time walks between death,

with his own footsteps and his breath;

burns like the loneliness that makes you fall in love,

burn in yourself, burning without flame,

loneliness without image, thirst without lips.

to end it all

oh dry world,

to end it all.

Octavio Paz shows us with this poem a reflection on life itself, on a feeling that has invaded us on more than one occasion. At some point we have all thought about leaving everything. Heartbreak, grief, loneliness, frustration... all these emotions and many more can make us ask ourselves the reason for our lives and where we want to redirect them.

38. Arrival at sea (José Hierro)

When I left you, myself

I promised myself that I would return.

And I'm back. I break with my legs

your serene glassware.

It's like delving into the principles,

how to get drunk with life

how to feel grow very deep

a tree with yellow leaves

and go crazy with the taste

of its most ignited fruits.

How to feel with your hands

in bloom, feeling joy.

How to hear the bass chord

from the surf and the breeze.

When I left you, myself

I promised myself that I would return.

It was in autumn, and in autumn

I come, again, to your shores.

(From between your waves the autumn

is born more beautiful every day.)

And now that I thought of you

constantly, who believed...

(The mountains that surround you

They have bonfires going.)

And now that I wanted to talk to you,

saturate me with your joy...

(You're a bird of mist

that pecks my cheeks.)

And now that I wanted to give you

all my blood, that I wanted…

(How beautiful, sea, to die in you

when he can't with my life.)

José Hierro tears us apart with a poem that describes the pain of separation and the desire to return. This poem transmits to us the very German emotion of the Sehnsucht, the Galician homesickness and the Portuguese saudade, feelings of sadness for longing for someone and wishing that they would soon be at our side.

39. Farewell (Gabriel Celaya)

Maybe when I die

they will say: he was a poet.

And the world, always beautiful, will shine without conscience.

Maybe you don't remember

who I was, but in you they sound

the anonymous verses that one day I put in the making.

maybe there's nothing left

not a word from me

not one of these words that today I dream in tomorrow.

But seen or not seen,

but said or not said,

I will be in your shadow, oh beautifully alive!

I will continue following

I will continue to die

I will be, I don't know how, part of the great concert.

Gabriel Celaya endows this poem with great vigor, but with the tear of pain due to the certainty of death, although with a certain message of optimism. It is not possible not to be carried away by melancholy in this poem, which leaves a shadow of hope at the end.

40. I'm tired (Luis Cernuda)

Being tired has feathers

it has funny feathers like a parrot,

feathers that certainly never fly,

but they babble like a parrot.

I'm tired of houses

promptly ruined without a gesture;

I'm tired of things

with a beating of silk turns then back.

I'm tired of being alive

although it would be more tiring to be dead;

i'm tired of being tired

among light feathers sagaciously,

feathers of the parrot that so familiar or sad,

the parrot that of always being tired.

Luis Cernuda camouflages us, in a somewhat comical and funny way, suffering, pain and the desire to stop suffering. But, although he talks about death and he sees in life something that generates fatigue, he does not see being dead as a very good idea, which he paints as also exhausting. The message behind all this is that the simple fact of existing, be it on this plane or in the other world, is tiring if you don't really want to exist.

41. And yet

You know very well that you are the first,

I'm not lying if I swear I would give

for you the whole life,

for you the whole life;

and yet, for a while, every day,

you see, I would cheat on you with anyone,

I would trade you for anyone.

Neither so sorry nor delighted

of having known me, I confess it.

You who have kissed so much,

you who have taught me,

you know better than me that to the bone

only the kisses that have not been given penetrate,

the lips of sin

Because a house without you is an ambush,

the corridor of a train at dawn,

a maze

without light or red wine,

a veil of tar in the look.

and they poison me

the kisses that I'm giving

and yet when

I sleep without you, with you I dream

and with all if you sleep by my side,

and if you leave I go through the roofs

like a cat without an owner

lost in the scarf of bitterness

that tarnishes without staining your beauty.

I shouldn't tell and yet

when I ask for a hotel key

and at midnight order

a good french champagne

and candlelit dinner for two,

It's always with another, love

never with you

Well you know what I'm saying.

Because a house without you is an office

a burning telephone in the cabin,

a palm tree

in the wax museum,

an exodus of dark swallows.

and when you come back

there's a party in the kitchen

and dances without orchestra

and bouquets of roses with thorns,

but two is not equal to one plus one

and on Monday to breakfast coffee

the cold war returns

and purgatory to the sky of your mouth

and to the bedroom the daily bread.

The poet and singer-songwriter Joaquín Sabina recounts in this poem the anguish that the narrator feels in the face of the duality of continuing to love his beloved but being with other women at the same time. During the poem, the author recounts the loneliness he feels without his beloved and the pain caused by his absence both in his house and in the privacy of his bed.

42. Open House (Theodore Roethke)

My secrets scream loud.

I have no need of language.

My heart offers hospitality,

My doors open freely.

an epic of the eyes

My love, without any disguise.

My truths are all planned,

This self-revealed anguish.

I'm naked to the bone

With nakedness I shield myself.

What I use is the same:

I keep my spirit sober.

The anger will remain

Acts will tell the truth

In exact and pure language

I stop the deceitful mouth:

Fury reduces my clearest scream

To foolish agony.

The American poet Theorode Roethke was a true genius of rhythm and haunting imagery. And that is precisely what we find in this poem: a continuous evolution of elements evocative of anguish through which the author makes us fleetingly transit.

43. Maybe in another life (Mario Benedetti)

maybe in another life

together we can

discover a first

kiss and do some

I walk the accomplice

silent of our

love.

maybe in another life

it is loneliness that today

I suffer, be just a

bad memory and find

love from your hand

Maybe in another life

wait in a corner

maybe with a rose

and an I love you between

the lips, maybe

hug your waist, way

to our home… maybe

In another life

In this poem we find a heartbreaking story about a love that almost was and could not be. The author laments wondering if perhaps in another life things will go better for the couple and love will triumph.

44. Sorrows of the Moon (Charles Baudelaire)

Tonight the moon dreams of more laziness,

As if she were a beauty sunk between cushions

That caresses with a discreet and light hand,

Before falling asleep, the outline of the breast.

On the silken back of sliding clouds,

Dying, she indulges in prolonged ecstasy,

And he wanders his gaze over white visions,

That ascend to blue just like blooms.

When on this globe, with idle languor,

She lets a furtive tear roll down,

A pious poet, enemy of sleep,

From her hand in the hollow, take the cold drop

like a fragment of opal with iridescent reflections.

And he keeps it on his chest, away from the voracious sun.

A beautiful poem by Charles Baudelaire steeped in sadness in which a night landscape is described, cold, gloomy and almost lifeless. The moon has always been one of the main inspirations for poets for centuries and no one knew how to portray a night landscape with a full moon and as ghostly as this one like Baudelaire.

45. Moments (Jorge Luis Borges)

If I could live my life again,

Next time I would try to make more mistakes.

Do not try to be so perfect, I would relax more.

I'd be dumber than I've been

in fact I would take very few things seriously.

It would be less hygienic.

I would take more risks

I would make more trips

I would contemplate more sunsets,

I would climb more mountains, I would swim more rivers.

I'd go to more places I've never been

I would eat more ice cream and less beans,

you would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people who lived sensibly

and prolifically every minute of his life;

of course I had moments of joy.

But if I could go back I would try

to have only good moments.

In case you don't know, that's what life is made of,

only moments; Do not miss the present.

I was one of those who never

they went nowhere without a thermometer,

a hot water bottle,

an umbrella and a parachute;

If I could live again, I would travel lighter.

if i could live again

I would start walking barefoot at the beginning

of spring

and would remain barefoot until the end of autumn.

I would go around more in a carousel,

I would contemplate more sunrises,

and I would play with more children,

if I had another life ahead of me.

But you see, I'm 85 years old...

And I know that I'm dying.

A poem awarded to the Argentine genius Jorge Luis Borges that invites you to live life to the full but with a truly sad ending. This work tells us about the passage of time in a bittersweet tone and reviews everything that the author would change if he lived his life again.