To Encourage

A poem from Miguel de Unamuno...

THROW YOURSELF LIKE SEED*

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 slowing 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.

*Published in Ten Poems to Set You Free, Roger Housden, Harmony Books, New York, 2003

Alberta grain bins - Hwy 23 South,  August 2011