THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Allow me to wax sentimental for a moment-
From time to time something so achingly beautiful comes along I am powerless to do anything but bow my head to the crushing dicotomy that is this existance. We worship that which deserves no praise while we profane the sacred. Most of the time...
Slit-your-wrists-gorgeous poetry:
I am both
spider and fly
snared in my own
web who sometimes
in the evening
thinks
how to reel
into a single ball
all those endless
sticky soul-threads
to throw them
into the blue fire
that sometimes
rises
from the bottom
of my mind
between sleep
and waking
And one more (I couldn't resist):
But it does come. Eppur si viene.
Comes, when I have closed my eyes.
Comes and looks at my open note book,
smiles and shakes the apple trees
so that the black cats fall
and get mixed up with the white cats,
the yellow chrysanthemums with the loudspeakers
and I slip downwards
as once on the lakeshore on the Karelian isthmus
down the granite slope from the white night
straight into the dark lake water.
All that I have written
is so different.
All that I have written
is so similar.
That similarity is nothing certain, no foundation,
rather that which changes, a wind, which blows
through the foundations. A wind.
It is foolish to think that an object is one thing
and its movement something else.
Existance cannot be divided into arrows and flight,
particles and their trajectories.
Arrow and flight are one. For the particle
is its own trajectory. I am my life.
I live my life. Life lives me.
Life and living are one.
Also when there is no 'me'.
Not yet. At this moment. Any more.
Thank you for your precious time and for allowing me to share something that fed my soul. Both poems were written by Jaan Kaplinski and translated from the Estonian by the author
From time to time something so achingly beautiful comes along I am powerless to do anything but bow my head to the crushing dicotomy that is this existance. We worship that which deserves no praise while we profane the sacred. Most of the time...
Slit-your-wrists-gorgeous poetry:
I am both
spider and fly
snared in my own
web who sometimes
in the evening
thinks
how to reel
into a single ball
all those endless
sticky soul-threads
to throw them
into the blue fire
that sometimes
rises
from the bottom
of my mind
between sleep
and waking
And one more (I couldn't resist):
But it does come. Eppur si viene.
Comes, when I have closed my eyes.
Comes and looks at my open note book,
smiles and shakes the apple trees
so that the black cats fall
and get mixed up with the white cats,
the yellow chrysanthemums with the loudspeakers
and I slip downwards
as once on the lakeshore on the Karelian isthmus
down the granite slope from the white night
straight into the dark lake water.
All that I have written
is so different.
All that I have written
is so similar.
That similarity is nothing certain, no foundation,
rather that which changes, a wind, which blows
through the foundations. A wind.
It is foolish to think that an object is one thing
and its movement something else.
Existance cannot be divided into arrows and flight,
particles and their trajectories.
Arrow and flight are one. For the particle
is its own trajectory. I am my life.
I live my life. Life lives me.
Life and living are one.
Also when there is no 'me'.
Not yet. At this moment. Any more.
Thank you for your precious time and for allowing me to share something that fed my soul. Both poems were written by Jaan Kaplinski and translated from the Estonian by the author