Pablo Neruda

Maybe You'll Remember

Maybe You'll Remember - meaning Summary

Love Recognized Through Conflict

The poem recalls a destructive pair who emerge from darkness and build weapons "against love," wrecking landscapes and defenses. Their brutality forces love to name itself, transforming abstract feeling into aware presence. In the final image the speaker looks to the beloved and finds direction: the loved one's heart and name become the path back to love. The poem traces how violence and recognition together reveal and reorient the self.

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Maybe you'll remember that razor-faced man who slipped out from the dark like a blade and - before we realized - knew what was there: he saw the smoke and concluded fire. The pallid woman with black hair rose like a fish from the abyss, and the two of them built up a contraption, armed to the teeth, against love. Man and woman, they felled mountains and gardens, then went down to the river, they scaled the walls, they hoisted their atrocious artillery up the hill. Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way.

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