I need help analyzing this poem?

Question

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

if each day,

each hour,

you feel that you are destined for me

with implacable sw

Answer 1

Like many of Neruda's personal love poems, it is powerfully written but loses steam after the first few stanzas (in this case the first two could stand convincingly alone as an entire poem, as my answer to the other question on those two verses suggests.)

The kindest I can be to the remaining, redundant stanzas, is that they are good groundwork for another, unwritten Neruda poem, and contain some strong counter arguments for his fears of being unloved by his beloved.

Answer 2

Weird reading Neruda in English. Had to read him for Senior level Spanish class back in high school.

Here, I get the impression the two lovers are apart (maybe living in two different places). Everything still reminds him of her: the moon and the autumn leaves he can see on the branches outside his window, the ashes inside the fireplace that he sits by at night...it all reminds him of his love in someway. However, he is telling her that the only reason he is still hanging onto the memory of her is that somehow, across all the distance that separates them, he can still feel her heart hanging onto the memory of him. For this same reason (he can feel what's still in her heart), he warns her that he will feel it if her love starts to fade. He compares her heart to a distant land, and all these different memories of her are the ships that allow his love to sail back to that distant land. If she allows her love for him to slip away, he will do the same. Right now, his affections have taken root inside her heart, but if she allows his love to be uprooted, he will have no choice to find his love a new home.

Answer 3

The poem is intriguing.  I especially like the way you will mimic the emotions so that s/he won't know if you are hurting because of the breakup.

You use interesting comparisons, strong anachronistic details to set the time line.

Good work.

T.