In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alown in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

-- Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

-- Elizabeth Bishop
Letter to New York

Boker tov, Qoheleth.

Proverbs and Songs

By Antonio Machado
(1875 - 1939)

English translation by Robert Bly

Dedicated to Jose Ortega y Gasset

I
         The eye you see is not
an eye because you see it;
it is an eye because it sees you.

II
         To talk with someone,
ask a question first,
then -- listen.

III
         Narcissism
is an ugly fault,
and now it’s a boring fault too.

IV
         But look in your mirror for the other one,
the other one who walks by your side.

V
         Between living and dreaming
there is a third thing.
Guess it.

VI
         This Narcissus of ours
can’t see his face in the mirror
because he has become the mirror.

VII
         New century? Still
firing up the same forge?
Is the water still going along in its bed?

VIII
         Every instant is Still.

IX
         The sun in Aries. My window
is open to the cool air.
Oh the sound of the water far off!
The evening awakens the river.

X
         In the old farmhouse
-- a high tower with storks! --
the gregarious sound falls silent,
and in the field where no on is,
water makes a sound among the rocks.

XI
         Just as before, I’m interested
in water held in;
but now water in living
rock of my chest.

XII
         When you hear water, does its sound tell you
if it’s from a mountain or farm,
city street, formal garden, or orchard?

XIII
         What I find surprises me:
leaves of the garden balm
smell of lemonwood.

XIV
         Don’t trace out your profile,
forget your side view --
all that is outer stuff.

XV
         Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be what you aren’t.

XVI
         When spring comes,
go to the flowers --
why keep on sucking wax?

XVII
         In my solitude
I have seen things very clearly
that were not true.

XVIII
         Water is good, so is thirst;
shadow is good, so is sun;
the honey from the rosemarys
ad the honey of the bare fields.

XIX
         Only one creed stands:
quod elixum est ne asato.
Don’t roast what’s already boiled.

XX
         Sing on, sing on, sing on,
the cricket in his cage
near his darling tomato.

XXI
         Form your letters slowly and well:
making things well
is more important than making them.

XXII
         All the same...
                 Ah yes! All the same,
moving the legs fast is important,
as the snail said to the greyhound.

XXIII
         There are really men of action now!
The marsh was dreaming
of its mosquitoes.

XXIV
         Wake up, you poets:
let echoes end,
and voices begin.

XXV
         But don’t hunt for dissonance;
because, in the end, there is no dissonance.
When the sound is heard people dance.

XXVI
         What the poet is searching for
is not the fundamental I
but the deep you.

XXVII
         The eyes you’re longing for --
listen now --
the eyes you see yourself in
are eyes because they see you.

XXVIII
         Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up.

XXIX
         Now someone has come up with this!
Cogito ergo non sum.
What an exaggeration!

XXX
         I thought my fire was out,
and stirred the ashes...
I burnt my fingers.

XXXI
         Pay attention now:
a heart that’s all by itself
is not a heart.

XXXII
         I’ve caught a glimpse of him in dreams:
expert hunter of himself,
every minute in ambush.

XXXIII
         He caught his bad man:
the one who on sunny days
walks with head down.

XXXIV
         If a poem becomes common,
passed around, hand to hand, it’s OK:
gold is chosen for coins.

XXXV
         If it’s good to live,
then it’s better to be asleep dreaming,
and best of all,
mother, is to awake.

XXXVI
         Sunlight is good for waking,
but I prefer bells --
the best thing about morning.

XXXVII
         Among the figs I am soft.
Among the rocks I am hard.
That’s bad!

XXXVIII
         When I am alone
how close my friends are;
when I am with them
how distant they are!

XXXIX
         Now, poet, your prophecy?
“Tomorrow what is dumb will speak,
the human heart and the stone.”

XL
         But art?
                 It is pure and intense play,
so it is like pure and intense life,
so it is like pure and intense fire.
You’ll see the coal burning.

without looking

What is the first word of the Declaration of Independence? ;)

Hint: it isn't "smoothies". That's for next time.

Take Comfort Where You Can

Not for nothing
are we given at least as much
sense as God gave a goose,
which we have no access to, sensewise.
We don't speak goose
nor recognize what body language
there may be in a body
which is mostly neck and dollop.
But down, now there is something
to build dreams on.
We have recourse
and in the morning the feathered snow
will have come and closed the roads.
Linger. Leave off.

-- Michael Chitwood