thrown together

A new WPA: The US government should pay urban youth to go into rural communities and to work during the summer. Agriculture, odd jobs, even to work retail at the Dollar General...it's about being together and sharing the space.

there is no road

Aphorism or poem, parable or poem, proverb or poem, prayer or poem—poem proper, whatever that is. Who knows what to call Machado’s short writings cast as poems? The musings of a poet walking in the countryside, through small towns, beside rivers, across empty plains. Certainly these writing ring like old church bells; for centuries marking the hours, days, lifetimes. Certain themes persist: truth, being, experience, the journey, words, selfhood, and of course the poet in the world.

One thinks, that had Machado lived in our times, these poems would have found success on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. I say this not to demean them, but to acknowledge how wide and far such writing could travel in our culture with its hunger for simple revelation and a humane vision. Perhaps these poems fall into that category of writing we call ‘wisdom literature’. Machado, who so much valued solitude, would be horrified at the thought of a hundred-thousand followers.

Shall we walk a while with Machado and listen:

I never chased fame,
nor longed to leave my song
behind in the memory of men.
I love the subtle worlds,
almost weightless, delicate
as soap bubbles.
I like to see them paint themselves
In colors of sunlight and float,
Scarlet into the blue sky, then
suddenly quiver and break.

--
Our hours are minutes
when we anticipate knowledge
and centuries when we know
what it’s possible to learn.

--
The best of the good people
know that in this life
it’s all a question of proportion;
a little more, a little less…

--
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship’s wake on the sea.

--
You say nothing is created?
It doesn’t matter; with the clay
of the earth, make a cup
so your brother can drink.

--
You say that nothing gets lost,
and perhaps what you say is true;
but we lose everything
and everything will lose us.

--
Looking at my skull
a new Hamlet will say:
here is a nice fossil
of a carnival mask.

--
Look in your mirror for the other one,
the one who accompanies you.

--
A new age? Is
the same forge still blazing?
Does water still flow
in the same riverbed?

--
In my solitude
I have seen very clearly
things that are not true.

--
Wake up singers!
Time for the echoes to end
and the voices to begin.

--
Don’t search for dissonance:
because, in the end, there is none;
people dance to any tune.

--
The eyes you are yearning for,
don’t be mistaken,
the eyes you see yourself in
—are eyes because they see you.

--
Let’s not be in a rush
for the glass to overflow;
it must be filled first.

--
When I’m alone
my friends are with me;
when I’m with them,
they seem so distant!

--
Pythagoras said:
Sow mallow,
but don’t eat it.
Buddha and Christ said,
Greet the blow of an ax
with your fragrance, like sandalwood.
It’s good to remember
the old sayings.
There time isn’t over yet.

—Antonio Machado, There is No Road (White Pine Press, 2003), Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney translators.

pure park

A golf course is a park where one is free from encountering other races and social classes.

[Trump's golf resorts and the set at the local country club come to mind here.]

fall into the real

Reality is our failure to live in the ideal.

rewarding oneself

He relaxed by testing himself not by treating himself.