Ecopoesia

Insistence

José Emilio Pacheco

Let’s talk about snow once more let’s say

its cardinal virtue is that it’s quiet

It knows how to be born with impeccable smoothness in the night

and when we wake we see it has claimed

the earth and the trees

 

The snow is all around you today, where will it go?

The snow that spins interminably around the city

and the house

will take off into thin air

again be cloud and water

 

then snow once more

 

You don’t have it’s easy adaptable nature

You’ll go on and die and be buried

You will be the clod of earth the snow settles on

 

 

 

Pacheco, José Emilio. "Insistence." Trans. George McWhirter. Selected Poems. Eds. George McWhirter and José Emilio Pacheco. New York: New Directions, 1987. p. 129.




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