POETRY IS LIKE TAKING A DEEP BREATH

Wednesday 16 January 2013

OCEANS

Juan Ramon Jimenez



I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.

And nothing
happened! Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .

- Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?



Juan Ramon Jimenez 
1881-1958

Oceans -  translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly
The  Ecco Anthology of International Poetry

Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry.”