The poem that has stayed with me is If You Forget Me by the widely celebrated Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. I have always loved Neruda’s poetry. Had he been alive, he would have turned 106 this year. I would love to learn Spanish so that I can read his poems in his native language. Those would be the real gems rather than his paraphrased versions, where the original essence can be lost in translation. Imagine the impact of reading his verses in Spanish, if glancing at his interpretations can be so exhilarating!
Writing love poems is a daunting task. One can’t just become mushy or melodramatic out of the blue. The ability to express this complex human emotion into black-and-white doesn’t come easy on the mind. The creative juices have to flow from within your heart and soul. The reader should feel the texture of the words, endowed with a tangible, visual quality.
If You Forget Me is lyrical in the way that it sways from one mood to another. I love the way it begins:
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…

Discovering his poems was a sheer act of serendipity for me. When I first came across this poem, I was in college. I bumped into his book of poems while browsing through a bookshop. I opened the page that carried this piece and rested my eyes on the first few words. They had a sense of urgency to start off with: I want you to know one thing... It was conversational in tone.

Abhijit Bhaduri is the author of Mediocre but Arrogant and Married But Available
As told to
Pramita Bose