to be an existential question

   

                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?

                                                 Juan Ramon Jimenez

                                                       tr.  Robert Bly

....

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

An airport is nowhere
which is not something
generally noticed

yet some unnamed person in the past
deliberately planned it
to be there

and you have spent time there
again
and are spending time there again
for something you have done
which you do not entirely remember

like the souls in Purgatory

you sit there in the smell
of what passes for food
breathing what is called air
while the timepieces measure
their agreement

you believe in it
while you are there
because you are there
and sometimes you may even feel happy
to be that far on your way
to somewhere


                   WS Merwin    (+ Ides of March 2019)






....

THE FINAL TOAST

Like it or not
We’re given only three choices:
The past, the present and the future.

And not even three
For the philosopher tells us
The past has passed
It’s ours only in memory:
From the rose stripped of her petals
Another petal can’t be drawn.

There are only two cards
In the deck:
The present and the future.

And not even two
Because everyone knows
That the present doesn’t exist
But in the way it becomes the past
And that’s passed…
Like youth.

To make a long story short
We’re being left only with the future:
I make a toast
For that day which never comes
But is the only thing
Really left in our control.

                                   Nicanor Parra  +2018  ( age 103 )






......