"I Myself" by Angel Gonzalez

I Myself

I myself
met me face to face at a crossing.
I saw on me
a stubborn expression, and a hardness
in the eyes, like
a man who'd stop at nothing.

The road was narrow, and I said to me:
"Stand aside, make
way,
for I have to get to such and such a place."

But I was not strong, and my enemy
fell upon me with all the weight of my flesh,
and I was left defeated in the ditch.

That's the way it happened, and I never could
reach that place, and ever since
my body walks by itself, getting lost,
distorting whatever plans I make.


-- Angel Gonzalez, "Harsh World" and Other Poems, trans. Donald D. Walsh, Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 45