At first blush, I didn’t think much of the first line indention in Castro’s two-stanza poem, “I well know there is nothing,” nor did I linger on the length of the sentences afterwards. After reading this once, it’s a very easy read; it’s translated so well that I would have thought it was written within the last century or so. However, after further analysis, the structure of the two stanzas, as well as the way the words are arranged within the two stanzas, make me believe this poem is more than just a splurt of words on a piece of paper, a rant about a person’s feeling of meaninglessness–it’s a poem with a unique structure by a unique romantic poet.

I noticed in my second reading that no matter how the lines were rearranged, the poem still made sense. For instance:

I well know there is nothing
new under the sky,
forever the same.
that what I think of now
others have thought before.
Well, because we are so,
clocks that repeat
Well, why do I write?

I think the reason why this is so is because Castro is the kind of romantic poet whose work portrays spontaneity and what is natural, not what is orderly and strict. Castro is also a poet who prefers to keep things concise and visceral, which is made very obvious by this poem.

In addition, and this might be due to translation, the lines following the first indented line of each stanza inverts the other’s lines; so that line 2 of stanza one is the same length of the line 8 in stanza two, line 3 is the same length as line 7, and line 4 is the same length as line 6. This, along with line 7 (“clocks that repeat,”) made me think that this poem was a twisted reflection, like Anthony Burgess’ thoughts on mankind in his novel A Clockwork Orange. Then Castro was reflecting on more than just the meaninglessness she was feeling at the time.