I love you without knowing how or when. I love you simply, where there is no you or I. So intimate, that your hand on my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I sleep your eyes close” ~ Pablo Neruda

It was when I was walking in Isla Negra that I got to know that Neruda (one of the most famous poets the world has known) had a house there.

Built on a rocky stretch of the Pacific Ocean, the house is packed with swords, bottles, butterflies. One room filled with seashells.

Neruda was infatuated with the sea. His Santiago house had a nautical themed bar. Around his 50th birthday, he fell in love with Matilda Urrutia, a Chilean singer. He used to meet here there, and eventually moved in with her. He called the house ” La Chascona” – the Quechua word for ‘dishevelled’, a tribute to Urrutia’s wild red hair.

“I want to do to you what spring does with cherry trees”.

He named Isla Negra after a place he had fallen in love with, while travelling in Sumatra. It’s rare to find a home that so openly reflects the soul of the owner – eccentric, eclectic, utterly charming.

“In one kiss you’ll know all I haven’t said.”

One of the bathrooms was filled with pictures of half naked women. On the door were hung frightening masks to scare away the women from using it.

After the coup in Chile, the army raided his house. “The only thing of danger here is poetry”, he said. They left without taking anything.

I noticed some scribblings on the walls. When people close to him died, he carved their names into the beams of his bar, so that he could continue drinking with them.

It’s easy to imagine the late night boozy conversations they would have had about poetry, love, travel and politics. It’s been forty years since his death. All 17 names are still there.

“Bury me at Isla Negra, in front of the sea I know, in front of every wrinkled rock and waves that my lost eyes will never see again”.

He was buried there, overlooking the ocean, with Urrutia.

I left his house that day, fascinated. I’ll end this post with one last quote of his –

“He who doesn’t travel, who doesn’t read, who doesn’t listen to music, who doesn’t find grace in himself, dies slowly”.