the people waiting

The ship, solid and black,

enters the clear blackness

of the great harbor.

Quiet and cold.

—The people waiting

are still asleep, dreaming,

and warm, far away and still stretched out in this 

dream, perhaps . . .

How real our watch is, beside the dream

of doubt the others had! How sure it is, compared

to their troubled dream about us!

Quiet. Silence.

Silence which in breaking up at dawn

will speak differently.

~ Juan Ramón Jiménez

 from Lorca and Jiménez: Selected Poems

translation by Robert Bly

art by picasso

nothing

I have a feeling that my boat

has struck, down there in the depths,

against a great thing.

And nothing

happens! Nothing... Silence... Waves...

-Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,

and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

translated by Robert Bly

Van Gogh reuses a canvas that he’d already painted 

some two and a half years earlier in Nuenen: x-ray photos

 reveal the head of a woman with a cap under Patch of grass.

who knows what is going on

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

How many times the sunrise was

there, behind a mountain!

How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off

was already a golden body full of thunder!

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

I was thinking of a flowery meadow

at the end of a road,

and found myself in the slough.

I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,

and found myself in the divine.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

English version by Robert Bly
with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

I am not I

.

I am not I.

I am this one

walking beside me whom I do not see,

whom at times I manage to visit,

and whom at other times I forget;

who remains calm and silent while I talk,

and forgives gently, when I hate,

who walks where I am not,

who will remain standing when I die.

~ Juan Ramón Jiménez

translated by Robert Bly

photo by Frantisek Drtikol

.