rejectomorph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rejectomorph) wrote2007-01-28 04:48 pm
rejectomorph) wrote2007-01-28 04:48 pm
Fast
I got the feeling that the sun was falling all over itself to get out of the sky this evening. The feeling was probably the result of my own hurry. Earth's rotation, I've heard, is seldom rushed. The speed of the planet's revolutions about the sun is fairly dependable as well, I've heard, but that movement too I've been perceiving as hurried. January is almost over, and that means winter is nearly half done. This happened while I wasn't looking.
I know that this feeling is only the result of the fact that each year is a smaller percentage of my lived life than the previous year, but the effect still takes me by surprise. I've turned into the old guy in the back seat of the car shouting at the driver "Hey, look out! Slow down! We're going to crash!" We are all going to crash eventually, of course. I'm just a bit closer to impact than most.
Now I'm going to go out and watch the stars whirl across the sky. I'll see patterns I've never seen before. It's the whole life of the Universe flashing before my eyes.
Sunday Verse
by Robert Desnos
I lived in those times. For a thousand years
I have been dead. Not fallen, but hunted;
When all human decency was imprisoned,
I was free amongst the masked slaves.
I lived in those times, yet I was free.
I watched the river, the earth, the sky,
Turning around me, keeping their balance
The seasons provided their birds and their honey.
You who live, what have you made of your luck?
Do you regret the time when I struggled?
Have you cultivated for the common harvest?
Have you enriched the town I lived in?
Living men, think nothing of me. I am dead.
Nothing survives of my spirit or my body.
-translation by Kenneth Rexroth
I know that this feeling is only the result of the fact that each year is a smaller percentage of my lived life than the previous year, but the effect still takes me by surprise. I've turned into the old guy in the back seat of the car shouting at the driver "Hey, look out! Slow down! We're going to crash!" We are all going to crash eventually, of course. I'm just a bit closer to impact than most.
Now I'm going to go out and watch the stars whirl across the sky. I'll see patterns I've never seen before. It's the whole life of the Universe flashing before my eyes.
Sunday Verse
Epitaph
by Robert Desnos
I lived in those times. For a thousand years
I have been dead. Not fallen, but hunted;
When all human decency was imprisoned,
I was free amongst the masked slaves.
I lived in those times, yet I was free.
I watched the river, the earth, the sky,
Turning around me, keeping their balance
The seasons provided their birds and their honey.
You who live, what have you made of your luck?
Do you regret the time when I struggled?
Have you cultivated for the common harvest?
Have you enriched the town I lived in?
Living men, think nothing of me. I am dead.
Nothing survives of my spirit or my body.
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More Rexroth translations
(Anonymous) 2007-01-29 10:48 pm (UTC)(link)