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:
me too me too x 10000.
I've been there, much too often I might add. Loved the Jiminez.
i love jimenez's work. thanks for posting this.
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.
i have that book, and often open to that very poem. wonderful.
Thanks for the read Sarah.
Isn't it an example of the greatness of simplicity?
Post a Comment