Throw Yourself Like Seed

Suddenly, bizarrely, I find that people are reading the things I write, that I am no longer screaming into the void, holding conversations with myself. How strange! I feel hesitant, somehow this affirmation makes me afraid; my confidence falters, my voice trembles.

Again to my father’s binder. What strength can I find there today?

THROW YOURSELF LIKE SEED

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing that lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Miguel de Unamuno