Guess.

FOURTEEN POEMS CHOSEN from MORAL PROVERBS and FOLK SONGS

1

The eye you see is not

an eye because you see it;

it is an eye because it sees you.

2

To talk with someone,

ask a question first,

then -- listen.

3

Narcissism

is an ugly fault

and now it's a boring fault too.

4

But look in your mirror for the other one,

the other one who walks by your side.

5

Between living and dreaming 

there is a third thing.

Guess it.

6

Look for the other half

who walks always next to you

and tends to be what you aren't.

7

In my solitude

I have seen things very clearly

that were not true.

8

Form your letters slowly and well:

making things well

is more important than making them.

9

What the poet is searching for 

is not the fundamental I

but the deep you.

10

Beyond living and dreaming

there is something more important:

waking up.

11

Pay attention now:

a heart that's all by itself

is not a heart.

12

If it's good to live,

then it's better to be asleep dreaming,

and best of all,

mother, is to awake.

13

When I am alone

how close my friends are;

when I am with them

how distant they are!

14

But art?

It is pure and intense play,

so it is like pure and intense life,

so it is like pure and intense fire.

You'll see the coal burning.

Antonio Machado

Thank You, Jessica.

Discover.

A VARIATION on MACHADO

I worry much about the suffering

of Machado. I was only one when he carried

his mother across the border from Spain to France

in a rainstorm. She died and so did he

a few days later in a rooming house along a dry canal.

To carry Mother he abandoned a satchel

holding his last few years of poetry.

I've traveled to Collioure several times

to search for Machado's lost satchel.

The French fed him but couldn't save him.

There's no true path to a death —

we discover the path by walking.

We turn a corner on no road

and there's a house on a green hill

with a thousand colorful birds sweeping in a circle.

Are the poems in the basement of the house on the hill?

We'll find out if we remember earth at all.

Jim Harrison

Seen.

Obata, Evening Moon, 1930

II

I have seen in my solitude
very clear things
that are not true.

Antonio Machado