Boats (Monday Poem)

by Alberto Blanco
translated by Judith Infante

1

A poem is a boat built of wood

and made by your own hands:

it's fragile, it's small,

but it can carry you as far

as the wind wants.

A poem is a boat built of wood

to drift with the flow,

until you come to a remote island

and decide to live there

forever.

2

A poem is a paper boat

made of your own words:

everything in your life fits

in the spaces formed by its folds

and its colors.

A poem is a paper boat 

to set sailing across

the lake of your days

and the nighttime pond

of your fondest dreams.

3

A boy is a small boat made of wood:

his oars are his hands,

the sails, his mind.

A girl is a small boat made of paper;

her shape is half a star

and her reflection the other part.

4

Life is a boat built of wood

sheltered by a dream .  . . . 

but it's the water too, where it floats,

and wind that sweeps it along,

and imagination that propels it.

Life is a paper boat . . .

but it's also a sad garden

and scarred crystals in a small lake

that reflect our globe

with all its shadows.

from The Tree is Older Than You Are: A Bilingual Gathering of Poems & Stories from Mexico with Paintings by Mexican Artists,

Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1995, Simon & Schuster