It’s good to have chosen <br />A living home <br />And housed time <br />In a ceaseless heart <br />And seen my hands <br />Alight on the world, <br />As on an apple <br />In a little garden, <br />To have loved the earth, <br />The moon and the sun <br />Like old friends <br />Who have no equals, <br />And to have committed <br />The world to memory <br />Like a bright horseman <br />To his black steed, <br />To have given a face <br />To these words — woman, children, <br />And to have been a shore <br />For the wandering continents <br />And to have come upon the soul <br />With tiny strokes of the oars, <br />For it is scared away <br />By a brusque approach. <br />It is beautiful to have known <br />The shade under the leaves, <br />And to have felt age <br />Creep over the naked body, <br />And have accompanied pain <br />Of black blood in our veins, <br />And gilded its silence <br />With the star, Patience, <br />And to have all these words <br />Moving around in the head, <br />To choose the least beautiful of them <br />And let them have a ball, <br />To have felt life, <br />Hurried and ill loved, <br />And locked it up <br />In this poetry.<br /><br />Jules Supervielle<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/homage-to-life/
