If You Forget Me

“If You Forget Me” focuses on explaining how Love Is Reciprocity (Mutual Exchange). The speaker, usually considered to be Neruda himself, explores a series of if-then statements, or conditional statements. The “beloved” (Line 46), usually considered Neruda’s wife, is the person—or “you” (Line 1)—who the speaker addresses in the poem. The speaker reacts to the beloved’s choices, both positive and negative. The tone of the poem is set in the first stanza. It is a declaration of a lover to his beloved. He wants her “to know / one thing” (Lines 1-2). The thing, or concept that he goes on to explain is Love Is Reciprocity, or how love is a mutual exchange. Neruda’s language is conversational and direct in this stanza.

In the second stanza, the language becomes more symbolic and figurative. Here, the speaker presents symbols that are familiar to readers of love poetry: “the crystal moon” (Line 5) and a “red branch” (Line 5)—a tree branch with leaves that have turned red in “autumn” (Line 6). Neruda uses the moon and the branch symbolically as things that draw the speaker to the beloved. His visual experience of these natural objects, as well as the history of their use in love poetry, draw him toward the beloved.