Wednesday Words - In the Middle of the Road

In the middle of the road there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
there was a stone
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

Never should I forget this event
in the life of my fatigued retinas.
never should I forget that in the middle of the road
there was a stone
there was a stone in the middle of the road
in the middle of the road there was a stone.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 

This poem is like a joke and we are inclined, first, to smile, yet a moment of thought suffices to restore a serious meaning to such an encounter. It is enough to live truly intensely our meeting with a thing to preserve it forever in our memory.  
–– Czeslaw Milosz

“In the Middle of the Road” by Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987), translated from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Bishop, from A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czeslaw Milosz), © Copyright 1996 by Czeslaw Milosz.