Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.
Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.
Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.
Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.
— Miguel de Unamuno
Thanks for this. I will keep the email that came this morning and read it many times this coming week. I love it that you’re posting regular poems again. A public service!
Reading this makes my decisonis easier than taking candy from a baby.
A daily poem puts my day on its feet, as I go forward with hope and resolve.
Many thanks!
Just started reading your poems, thank you! Enjoying them immensely.
When the first lines we’ve learn to read have a rhythm and the lyrics of songs are evocative of life’s sublime moments, life itself becomes poetry. As such, why we’re push into a mere functional, utilitarian, reductionist, straight language? when it seems that life is far from simple, we are not an abstract and definitely not just the means to an end.
Unamuno’s Throw Yourself Like Seed is sweet.
I could not find the Spanish version.
Can you post the title of the original version when posting translated poems?
/Jared