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Noviembre 20, 2005
Humankind...
Humankind cannot stand too much reality.
T. S. Eliot
Posted by sarita at 10:05 PM
Noviembre 6, 2005
Conversation with a Rock
I knock at the door of the rock.
"It's me, let me in.
I want to enter your interior,
have a look around,
take you in like breath."
"Go away," says the rock,
"I am shut tight.
Even broken to bits
we would be shut tight.
Even ground into sand
we would not let anyone in."
I knock at the door of the rock.
"It's me, let me in.
I come out of sheer curiosity.
Life is my only chance.
I plan on wandering through your palace,
and then touring the leaf and the water droplet.
I don't have too much time for all this.
My mortality ought to move you."
"I'm a rock," says the rock,
"I can't help but be grave.
Go away.
I lack the muscles for laughing."
I knock at the door of the rock.
"It's me, let me in.
I've heard there are vast, empty rooms inside you,
unseen, beautiful in vain,
mute, devoid of the echo of footsteps.
Admit it, you don't know much about any of this."
"Vast, empty rooms," says the rock,
"but there is no room in them.
Beautiful maybe, but not suited to the taste
Of your meager senses.
You may get to know me, but you will never know me.
I turn my whole surface to you,
and turn my entire interior away."
I knock at the door of the rock.
"It's me, let me in.
I'm not seeking shelter for eternity.
I'm not unhappy.
I'm not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I'll enter and leave empty-handed.
And as evidence that I was truly present
I'll offer nothing but words,
which no one will believe."
"You will not be coming in," says the rock.
"You lack a sense of partaking.
None of your senses can make up for the sense of partaking.
Even sight, sharpened to omnividence,
will get you nowhere without a sense of partaking.
You will not be coming in. You have but a scent of this sense,
merely it's seed, imagination."
I knock at the door of the rock.
"It's me, let me in.
I can't wait two thousand centuries
to come in under your roof."
"If you don't believe me," says the rock,
"go to the leaf, you'll hear the same thing.
Or to the water droplet; it'll say the same.
Finally, ask a hair from your own head.
I am bursting with laughter, laughter, giant laughter
though I don't know how to laugh."
I knock at the door of the rock.
"It's me, let me in."
"I don't have a door," says the rock.
Wislawa Szymborska
Posted by sarita at 1:58 PM