Octavio 3 Poem by RIC BASTASA

'We pursue modernity
in her incessant metamorphoses
yet we never manage to trap her.
She always escapes:
each encounter ends in flight.
We embrace her and
she disappears
immediately:
it was just a little air.

It is the instant,
that bird that is everywhere
and nowhere.

We want to trap it alive
but it flaps its wings
and vanishes
in the form of a handful
of syllables.

We are left empty-handed.
Then the doors of perception open slightly
and the other time appears,
the real one we were searching for
without knowing it:
the present,
the presence.'