In 1924 Pablo Neruda published Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair). He was only twenty years old and was to become one of the greatest Spanish-speaking poets of all times.

One of the most memorable poems in this book is the one I bring you here. It’s poem number 20 and is called Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche (Tonight I can write the saddest lines).

In the first video below you can hear Poem number 20 read out in Spanish. Of all the versions I’ve heard this is, in my opinion, the most beautiful one. The reader’s voice captures all the strength and sadness of the verses.

In the second video you can hear Poem number 20 in English. Poetry loses a lot of its beauty and mystery in translation, but in this video enough remains of it to be worth watching at least once.

Pablo Neruda was born in 1904 in Parral, Chile, and died in 1973 in Santiago de Chile, twelve days after general Augusto Pinochet’s military coup. Two years earlier he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

If you want to get the books Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada or Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, you can find them here.