To Go Into a Forest Alone
by Jim Harrison
What is it to actually go outside the nest
we have built for ourselves, and earlier
our father’s nest: to go into a forest
alone with our eyes open? It’s different
when you don’t know what’s over the hill —
keep the river on your left, then you see
the river on your right. I have simply
forgotten left and right, even up and down,
whirl then sleep on a cloudy day to forget
direction. It is hard to learn how
to be lost after so much training.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Only after being lost can you be found. The you that is deeper and more alive than the you defined by memory, self-description, and conditioning. To see something fresh, there has to be a gap, a space of not knowing, not choosing, not substituting one set of definitions for another. There has to be space for something new to be born.
~~~~~~~~~~~
It Is Born
by Pablo Neruda
Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Nace
Yo aquí vine a los límites
en donde no hay que decir nada,
todo se aprende con tiempo o océano,
y volvía la luna,
sus líneas plateadas
y cada vez se rompía la sombra
con un golpe de ola
y cada día en el balcón del mar
abre las alas, nace el fuego
y todo sigue azul como mañana.
English translation of “Nace” by Alastair Reid.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
