Masthead Logo The Iowa Review

Volume 17
Article 32
Issue 2 Spring-Summer

1987

From "Vertical Poetry"

Roberto Juarroz

W. S. Merwin

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Recommended Citation
Juarroz, Roberto and W. S. Merwin. "From "Vertical Poetry"." The Iowa Review 17.2 (1987): 91-91. Web.
Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.3519

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from Vertical Poetry- RobertoJuarroz

The smoke of death

has turned the path into a moving stone.
What floor or or frame
twisting
can it rest now
give
or simply hold it up?
What skin can give it its wound
so that it can fulfill its impulse
or intention or
gesture?

Or is the smoke of death

a
only mirage,
the misleading refraction of a stone that never moves?

* * *

Words fall from the clouds.

They fall for the sake of falling,

not for anyone to pick them up.
to recover
They fall strength
in the quietest tension.

one of these words stops

Suddenly
as in the air.
though suspended
Then I give it my own fall.

translated W. S. Merwin
by

91

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