Kassi · Kennedy

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

Cómo puede una mano enciende el fuego en la piel
cambiando carga un reconocimiento callado
Cómo hace ojos cantan sin hacer un sonido
Y en el corazón palabras tácitas resuenan
Y comprendo de repente por qué
no hay simplemente palabras de describir

- Poem written in Spanish by: Unknown

How can a hand ignite fire on the skin
By shifting weight a quiet recognition
How do eyes sing without making a sound
And in my heart unspoken words resound
And I suddenly understand why
There are simply no words to describe

- Rough Spanish to English translation by: Kassi Kennedy

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
—Horace Smith.

Two more dead fish and a room with out anyone
Depression won't let me forgive
Namaste, Namaste, Namaste

Los dias no se descartan ni se suman, son abejas
que ardieron de dulzuro o enfurecieron
el aguijon: el certamen continua,
van y vienen los viajes desde la miel al dolor.
No, no se deshila la red de los anos: no hay red.
No caen gota a gota desde un rio: no hay rio.
El sueno no divide la vida en dos mitades,
ni la accion, ni el silencio, ni la virtud:
fue como una piedra la vida, un solo movimiento,
una sola fogata que reverbero en el follaje,
una flecha, una sola, lenta o activa, un metal
que ascendio y descendio quemandose en tus huesos.

- Pablo Neruda

- - - - - - - - - -

The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of the years doesn't unweave: there is no net.
They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,
or action, or silence or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that clibs or descends burning in your bones.

I wanted to write a poem about
bees with their suicidal sting
and the sadness that I inherited
But I don't know how to convey
The beauty about stinging bees
or the beauty of too much sadness