A Writer's Ruminations

"And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind."

— Pablo Neruda, from “Poetry” (translated by Alastair Reid)

"Snow has turned the world into a cemetery.
But the world already was a cemetery
and the snow has only come to announce it."

— Roberto Juarroz, from “Ninth Vertical Poetry” (translated by Mary Crow)

"Every word is a doubt,
every silence another doubt.
However,
the intertwining of both
let us breathe.

All sleeping is a sinking down,
all waking another sinking.
However,
the intertwining of both
let us rise up again.

All life is a form of vanishing,
all death another form.
However,
the intertwining of both
let us be a sign in the void."

— Roberto Juarroz, from “Eleventh Vertical Poetry” (translated by Mary Crow)

"The bell is full of wind
though it does not ring.
The bird is full of flight
though it is still.
The sky is full of clouds
through it is alone.
The word is full of voice
though no one speaks it.
Everything is full of fleeing
though there are no roads.

Everything is fleeing
toward its presence.
"

— Roberto Juarroz, from “Sixth Vertical Poetry” (translated by W.S. Merwin)

"          you are
like a bird in my hands
          vulnerable
as only desire could make you vulnerable
that exquisite pain with which we touch one another
that surrender in which we know
the abandon of victims

pleasure like a tongue
licks us           devours us
and our eyes burn out
          are lost
"

— Veronica Volkow, from “The Beginning” (translated by Martha Christina)

"the trees murmur, they tell us something"

— Octavio Paz, from “I Speak of the City” (translated by Eliot Weinberger)

"Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences."

— Octavio Paz

"As my father’s breathing fails,
the transparency of the windowpane
reminds me that outside there is the world.
I contemplate the brightly lit city,
the cars going by,
the teenager who meets
his girlfriend on a corner,
the passing bicyclist,
the athlete running across the park meadow.
Pondering the fragility of time
I contemplate the world,
the window again,
the reunited family,
and I am thinking that my father no longer speaks
or sees or hears,
that his dead senses
are beginning to perceive the theater of the world
through us,
that the only memory of his life
is what lies in the fragments of our memory:
an immense puzzle with missing pieces.
what must he be thinking about as he leaves himself behind?
My mother’s skin?
Newsreels from the Second World War?
First communion and the commandments?
The tumors spreading through his body?
My father, stammering,
says he has a stone in his throat,
it won’t fall,
he’s going to fall with it,
To where? In what place?"

— Manuel Ulacia, from “The Stone at the Bottom” (translated by Reginald Gibbons)

"Into what waters do we fall
when we leave, if time does not exist?
What is the depth of heaven?"

— Manuel Ulacia, from “The Stone at the Bottom” (translated by Reginald Gibbons)

"You’re irreplaceable. And because you are,
the life you gave me is condemned to loneliness."

— Pier Paolo Pasolini, from “Prayer to My Mother” (translated by Norman MacAfee and Luciano Martinengo)