Saturday, May 05, 2012

Poem for Saturday, Brookside Spring, Sanctuary

Between Going and Staying
By Octavio Paz
Translated by Eliot Weinberger

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

--------

Daniel is home, Uncle Mickey is staying with my parents, and my sister Nicole is coming tomorrow so that we can all go to the memorial service for Aunt Shirley. So we'll have a nice family reunion for the worst possible reason. I had a pretty quiet Friday; I spent the morning writing a review of Deep Space Nine's "Sanctuary", then Paul and I went to pick up Daniel, who wasn't even sure he could get home till Sunday morning at the beginning of the week but apparently was very productive finishing his final projects.

We had dinner at my parents' house with Mickey and the kids, then came home so Daniel could work on a programming project while the rest of us watched Nikita. Then we watched several mid-sixth season DS9 episodes, which is where we left off with Daniel last time he was home. Tomorrow is going to be a long day with family (in-laws before memorial dinner and service) so I'll post some photos from Brookside Gardens last week and go to bed:















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