To The Great Zero
by Antonio Machado

Selected and Translated from Spanish
by Gill Schwartz

When the Being that It Is
gave the Nothing form and rested,
how well it was deserved.
Already day had night, and man
had company in the absence of the beloved.

Let there be shadow! Then human thought poured forth.
And the universal Egg appeared, empty,
already pallid, insubstantial and cold,
abundant its offering, tenuous and misty.

Grasp the integral zero, the spherical null,
that you must look at, if you are to see it, fearlessly.
Today that finds calm your brutish bull,
and is the miracle of lacking completion,
promises, poet, a song in the face
of death, of silence, of oblivion.

Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2003   www.WisdomVisions.com