Neruda’s poem interpreted by The Brazilian Girls
English translation from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems
I Like It When You’re Quiet
I like it when you’re quiet. It’s as if you weren’t here now,
and you heard me from a distance, and my voice couldn’t reach you.
It’s as if your eyes had flown away from you, and as if your mouth were closed because I leaned to kiss you.
Just as all living things are filled with my soul,
you emerge from all living things filled with the soul of me.
It’s as if, a butterfly in my dreams, you were my soul,
and as if you were the soul’s word, melancholy.
I like it when you’re quiet. It’s as if you’d gone away now.
And you’d become the keening, the butterfly’s insistence.
And you heard from a distance and my voice didn’t reach you:
it’s then that what I want is to be quiet with your silence.
It’s then that what I want is to speak to your silence
in a speak as clear as lamplight, as plain as a gold ring.
You are quiet like the night, and like the night you’re star-lit.
Your silences are star-like, they’re a distant and simple thing.
I like it when you’re quiet. It’s as if you weren’t here now.
It’s as if you were dead now, and sorrowful, and distant.
A word then is sufficient, or a smile, to make me happy,
happy that it seems so certain that you’re present.
