Category Archives: Poetry

A Little Nothing

A friend sent me the poem below by Eduardo Chirinos; she subscribes to Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation. I thought it was lovely and looked up Eduardo Chirinos on the Poetry Foundation website.  Enjoy!

Le petit bout de rien

There’s no cause for vanity and none for

pride: it’s just a matter of assembling

words in lines, then dividing them up (or

letting them divide themselves), hoping

they sound good or bad. (What’s important

is that they sound like something.) It’s all

a question of staying alert so that red doesn’t

bleed into orange or orange into yellow or

yellow into silence. There’s no cause for

rejecting silence and none for accepting it,

either. We should speak when there’s noth-

ing to say and be quiet when others talk.

That’s the poet’s business, so get used to it.

There’s nothing glorious about it. The future

doesn’t count for anything and the past just

laughs at us. There’s no cause for writing

this poem and none for deleting it, either.