1010. Good Bones - Maggie Smith

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious ill-advised ways
in a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways,
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

1009. And - Shuntarō Tanikawa

Translated from the Japanese by William I Elliott and Kazuo Kawamure

When summer comes
the cicadas
sing again.
Fireworks
freeze
in my memory.
Distant countries are dim
but the universe
is right in front of your nose.
What a blessing 
that people
can die
leaving behind
only the conjunction
"and".

1008. What Is Lost - Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler

I wonder whee my life is, the one that could
have been and never was, the daring one
or the one of gloomy dread, that other thing
which could as well have been the sword or shield
but never was? I wonder where is my lost
Persian or Norwegian ancestor,
where is the chance of my not being blind,
where is the anchor, the ocean, where the forgetting
to be who I am? I wonder where the pure
night is that the unlettered working day
entrusts to the rough laborer so that he
can also feel the love of literature
I also think about a certain mate
who waited for me once, perhaps still waits.

1007. First Sight - Philip Larkin

.

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow.