You can see the face of everything, and it is white— <br />plaster, nightmare, adobe, anemia, cold— <br />turned to the east. Oh closeness to life! <br />Hardness of life! Like something <br />in the body that is animal—root, slag-ends— <br />with the soul still not set well there— <br />and mineral and vegetable! <br />Sun standing stiffly against man, <br />against the sow, the cabbages, the mud wall! <br />—False joy, because you are merely <br />in time, as they say, and not in the soul! <br /> <br /> The entire sky taken up <br />by moist and steaming heaps, <br />a horizon of dung piles. <br />Sour remains, here and there, <br />of the night. Slices <br />of the green moon, half-eaten, <br />crystal bits from false stars, <br />plaster, the paper ripped off, still faintly <br />sky-blue. The birds <br />not really awake yet, in the raw moon, <br />streetlight nearly out. <br />Mob of beings and things! <br />—A true sadness, because you are really deep <br />in the soul, as they say, not in time at all! <br /> <br /> <br />Translated by Robert Bly<br /><br />Juan Ramón Jiménez<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dawn-outside-the-city-walls/
