UNDER THE DAY

 

 

Now, methinks, the autumnal tints are brightest in our streets and in the woods generally.... Stand where half a dozen large elms droop over a house. It is as if you stood within a ripe pumpkin rind, and you feel as mellow as if you were the pulp.

(HDT, Journal, 6 October 1858)

 

Ahora, pienso, los tintes otoñales están en su explendor en nuestras calles y en los bosques en general ... Permaneces donde media docena de grandes olmos cuelgan sobre una casa.Es como si permanecieras en el interior de una calabaza madura y te sientes tan dulce como si tu fueras la pulpa.

 

(HDT, Diario 6 de octubre de 1858)

 

 

Uno de los placeres de la edad madura es descubrir que uno en efecto estaba en lo cierto, y mucho más de lo que creía estarlo, digamos a los 17 o a los 23 años.

Ezra Pound

(Abc of reading)

Under the Day

To come back like autumn
to the moss on the stones
after many seasons
to recur as a face
backlit on the surface
of a dark pool one day
after the year has turned
from the summer it saw
while the first yellow leaves
stare from their forgetting
and the branches grow spare

is to waken backward
down through the still water
knowing without touching
all that was ever there
and has been forgotten
and recognize without
name or understanding
without believing or
holding or direction
in the way that we see
at each moment the air

— W.S. Merwin, from The Pupil