Analysis of If you Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

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 sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Today's poem is by Pablo Neruda.  It's a translation from Spanish and if you can understand Spanish I highly recommend you take a look at the work in it's original language, even if you know only a smattering.  Pablo Neruda is perhaps best known for his love poetry, and here is a fantastic example.

The first stanza is a phrase broken down into two lines that frame the topic of the poem.  The fear of a lover losing their loved one, not through death but through forgetfulness.  It's perhaps a little worthwhile to understand that couples often lose each other through forgetfulness to one another.  It may be this aspect of loss that the poet is referencing.  

The second stanza speaks of the lovers knowledge of how these things work.  This is the second plain statement made in a row.  Perhaps repeated to convey the ardency of the narrator's love for the beloved, and the willingness to be totally honest about how it works.

The fourth line invokes the sense of sight, and the lines following after convey what the narrator might see as the moon or an autumn tinged branch.  Here the thought is not finished yet and the narration goes on to imply what the narrator might touch, be it a log or ashes.

The eleventh line is quick in it's turn of topic to the beloved.  The aforementioned lines are simply pathways to her.  The twelfth line speaks to the universality of this sense of being carried.  All things carry him to her.  This is the stuff of metaphors. 

The next few lines go on to characterize this phenomenon as little boats that sail to her being.  These outer phenomenon carry him to the isles of her, that are always waiting for him.

The next stanza is short and encapsulates the threat of rejection in the guise of ebbing love.  The narrators love for the beloved shall stay proportional to how much he is loved by her.  If  slowly she should stop loving him, he shall stop loving her slowly.

The stanza following this one details the ends of such an ebbing love, forgetfulness.  It's contrast to the preceding stanza is that forgetfulness is sudden unlike the ebbing love above.  It follows the same basic meaning as the stanza preceding but deepens in it's projections of lost love.  If the narrator is forgotten, he'll have already forgotten his lover.

The stanza after is a third repetition of what will happen if he is forgotten by the beloved.  Detailing in what way the beloved might lose her love for the narrator.  Here he imagines himself as a tree where his heart is rooted upon the shore.  But unlike a tree he's unwilling to be left alone on the shore, and much unlike a tree he'll pick himself up and move on with life. Particularly to shores where he's wanted.

The last stanza is a return to the beloved though.  As a poem of hypothetical rejection it ends on a high note,  detailing how such a fate as above mentioned might be avoided.  The beloved must feel as though she is destined for him.  Every day a flower, in some sense an article of beauty must climb to her lips in search of him.  The results of this sort of love is made clear.  The ardor that burns in the heart of his beloved will be mirrored in his own.  Nothing that he does or thinks concerning her will go dead or be forgotten.  This line is important because the subject of the poem is about the hypothetical loss of love through forgetfulness.  The poet recognizes that love is the enemy of forgetfulness and vice versa.  That their love is interconnected, fire feeding upon fire.   The last line deliberately befuddles and makes difficult to discern which of them the possesses the fire, implying that such things are too closely intermingled to define.   This fire will be in her arms, but will also persist in his.  She has become his fire, a fire that needn't worry about being extinguished.