1152. Sometimes - David Whyte

Sometimes

if you move carefully

through the forest,

breathing

like the ones 

in the old stories,

who could cross

a shimmering bed of leaves

without a sound,

you come

to a place 

whose only task

is to trouble you

with tiny

but frightening requests,

conceived out of nowhere

but in this place

beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what

you are doing right now,

and

to stop what you

are becoming

while you do it,

questions

that can make

or unmake

a life,

questions

that have patiently 

waited for you,

questions

that have no right

to go away. 

1151. Writing A Resume - Wislawa Szymborska

Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

What’s needs to be done?

Fill out the application

and enclose the resume

Regardless of the length of life

a resume is best kept short.

Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur.

Landscapes are replaced by addresses, 

shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.

Of all your loves, mention only marriage:

of all your children, only those who were born.

Who knows you matters more than whom you know.

Trips only if taken abroad.

Memberships in what but without why.

Honors, but not how they were earned. 

Write as if you’d never talked to yourself

and always kept yourself at arm’s length.

Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds,

dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.

Price, not worth,

and title, not what’s inside.

His shoe size, not where he’s off to,

that one you pass off as yourself.

In addition, a photograph with one ear showing

What matters is its shape, not what it hears.

What is there to hear, anyway?

The clatter of paper shredders.

1150. On Living (Part 1) - Nazim Hikmet

Translated from the Turkish by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

Living is no laughing matter:

you must live with great seriousness a squirrel, for example—

   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,

       I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Living is no laughing matter: you must take it seriously,

        so much so and to such a degree

that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,

your back to the wall, or else in a laboratory

in your white coat and safety glasses, you can die for people—

even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,

even though you know living

is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

I mean, you must take living so seriously

 that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—

 and  not for your children, either, but because although 

         you fear death you don’t believe it,

         because living, I mean, weighs heavier.