Le petit bout de rien
There's no cause for vanity and none for
pride: it's just a matter of assembling
words in lines, then dividing them up (or
letting them divide themselves), hoping
they sound good or bad. (What's important
is that they sound like something.) It's all
a question of staying alert so that red doesn't
bleed into orange or orange into yellow or
yellow into silence. There's no cause for
rejecting silence and none for accepting it,
either. We should speak when there's noth-
ing to say and be quiet when others talk.
That's the poet's business, so get used to it.
There's nothing glorious about it. The future
doesn't count for anything and the past just
laughs at us. There's no cause for writing
this poem and none for deleting it, either.
Copyright Credit: Eduardo Chirinos, "Le petit bout de rien" from Still Life with Flies. Translated by G.J. Racz. Copyright © 2016 by Dos Madres Press. Reprinted by permission of Dos Madres Press.