Saturday, June 21, 2014

To Encourage

A poem from Miguel de Unamuno...


Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life
is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowing winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing
which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your
own field,
don't turn your face for that would be to turn it
to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead
in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group
of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to
gather yourself.

*Published in Ten Poems to Set You Free, Roger Housden, Harmony Books, New York, 2003

Alberta grain bins - Hwy 23 South,  August 2011


elle said...

thanks, 'tis true!

rtquilter said...

Beautiful, Margaret. Thanks so much!

Judy Warner said...

Thank you, Margaret

Jo Ferguson said...

I don't think I could really explain but that poem was well timed at this point, in my life. Thank you.