Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green—
when willow fluff scatters, falling blossoms will fill the town.
Snowy boughs by the eastern palisade set me pondering—
in a lifetime how many springs do we see?
translated by Burton Watson
mortality
on time
restless mind
will not shut down
sleep elusive
so often these days
memories of moments
hours long gone
time slipping away
the weight of mortality
heavy to bear
now
not forever
just time
erasing tomorrow
when yesterday
is today
from Death in Sardinia by Marco Vichi
One life is not enough. You barely manage to understand two scraps of rubbish and it’s already time to feed the pigeons.
from Small Memories by Jose Saramago
There you were, grandma, sitting on the sill outside your house, open to the vast, starry night, to the sky of which you knew nothing and through which you would never travel, to the silence of the fields and the shadowy trees, and you said, with all the serenity of your ninety years and the fire of an adolescence never lost: “The world is so beautiful, it makes me sad to think I have to die.” In those exact words. I was there.
translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Leonard Durso 