12.2.07

no one has stepped...

These days … I’m contemplating the nature of poetry, the need for it – wondering why I even make attempts at hearing it, at allowing it to find paper … with my hand as the villain. The more I try to speak it, the more it hides –

whispering to me from mountain-laurel near the edge of a creek – with its scattering of moss-covered stones for stepping, though no one has stepped – finding its way through a stand of red spruce in January.

Though I can never be certain.

*

Juan Ramón Jiménez

Oceans

      I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
                             And nothing
happens! Nothing … Silence … Waves …

      —Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

           (Trans. Robert Bly)

7 comments:

Hum & Aepha said...

me too me too x 10000.

Suzanne said...

I've been there, much too often I might add. Loved the Jiminez.

JC said...

i love jimenez's work. thanks for posting this.

sam of the ten thousand things said...

Thanks to h&a, suzanne, and jill for the read. Jiminez is an interesting poet. And "Oceans" is like the soundtrack in my head these days.

SarahJane said...

i have that book, and often open to that very poem. wonderful.

sam of the ten thousand things said...

Thanks for the read Sarah.

Anonymous said...

Isn't it an example of the greatness of simplicity?