The Ballad of Slowness

by Herman de Coninck
(translated by David Colmer)

I love the slowness of lying on grass, like a king:
me, looking out and surveying my adherents,
my extremities, telling my left arm:
you there, convey my hand to my mouth
that I might yawn, that’s right,
and now lie down again, excellent,
I must have discipline.

I love the slowness of being,
Zen, they say in the East, I believe
it’s the same thing.
I love the slowness of lying in bed,
you next to me, with your knees behind
my knees, like a double S, the slowness with which
you haven’t told me yet that you’re awake,
your responsiveness consisting of lips,
the slowness with which I come faster and faster,
the calmness with which I grow wilder and wilder,
the slowness of your diplomatic body
that gives and takes, your corps diplomatique,

and the slowness of a cigar afterwards,
the slowness of grandeur, the slowness of someone
smashing his car into a tree in slow
motion, the majesty of explosion, solemn,
solemnly ends this life.

A Thought for the New Year

76.

People are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, the are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and the stiff will be broken.
The soft and the supple will prevail.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (The Classic of the Way of Virtue), possibly 6th Century BC