I am the pause

Between going and staying the day wavers, 

in love with its own transparency. 

The circular afternoon is now a bay 

where the world in stillness rocks. 

All is visible and all elusive, 

all is near and can't be touched. 

Paper, book, pencil, glass, 

rest in the shade of their names. 

Time throbbing in my temples repeats 

the same unchanging syllable of blood. 

The light turns the indifferent wall 

into a ghostly theater of reflections. 

I find myself in the middle of an eye, 

watching myself in its blank stare. 

The moment scatters. Motionless, 

I stay and go: I am a pause.

~ Octavio Paz

photo by David Orndorf

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a tree within

A tree grew inside my head.

A tree grew in.

Its roots are veins,

its branches nerves,

thoughts its tangles foliage.

Day breaks

in the body’s night.

There, within, inside my head,

the tree speaks.

Come closer—can you hear it?

~ Octavio Paz

translation by Eliot Weinberger

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between what I see and what I say

for Roman Jakobson

1

Between what I see and what I say,

Between what I say and what I keep silent,

Between what I keep silent and what I dream,

Between what I dream and what I forget:

poetry.

It slips

between yes and no,

says

what I keep silent,

keeps silent

what I say,

dreams

what I forget.

It is not speech:

it is an act.

It is an act

of speech.

Poetry

speaks and listens:

it is real.

And as soon as I say

it is real,

it vanishes.

Is it then more real?

2

Tangible idea,

intangible

word:

poetry

comes and goes

between what is

and what is not.

It weaves

and unweaves reflections.

Poetry

scatters eyes on a page,

scatters words on our eyes.

Eyes speak,

words look,

looks think.

To hear

thoughts,

see

what we say,

touch

the body of an idea.

Eyes close,

the words open.

~ Octavio Paz (1914-1998),

from A Tree Within, (Poems 1976-1987)

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a waking

I was walled inside a dream.

Its walls had no consistency,

no weight: its emptiness was its weight.

The walls were hours and the hours

sorrow, hoarded forever.

The time of those hours was not time.

I leapt through a breach: in this world

it was four o’clock. The room was my room

and my ghost was in each thing.

I wasn't there. I looked out the window:

not a soul under the electric light.

Vigilant streetlamps, dirty snow,

houses and cars asleep, the insomnia

of a lamp, the oak that talks to itself,

the wind and its knives, the illegible

writing of the constellations.

The things were buried deep in themselves

and my eyes of flesh saw them

weary of being, realities

stripped of their names. My two eyes

were souls grieving for the world.

On the empty street the presence

passed without passing, vanishing

into its forms, fixed in its changes,

and turned now into houses, oaks, snow, time.

Life and death flowed on, blurred together.

Uninhabited sight, the presence

looked at me with nobody’s eyes:

a bundle of reflections over the cliffs.

I looked inside: the room was my room

and I wasn't there. Being lacks nothing

—always full of itself, always the same—

even though we are not there … Outside,

the clarities, still uncertain:

dawn in the jumble of the rooftops.

The constellations were being erased.

~ Octavio Paz

translated by Eliot Weinberger,

 from  A Tree Within

with thanks to growing orbits

art by sara fairfax

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interval

Instantaneous architectures

hanging over a pause,

apparitions neither named

nor thought, wind-forms,

insubstantial as time

and, like time, dissolved.

Made of time, they are not time;

they are the cleft, the interstice,

the brief vertigo of between

where the diaphanous flower opens:

high on its stalk of a reflection

it vanishes as it turns.

Never touched, the clarities

seen with the eyes closed:

transparent birth

and the crystalline fall

in the instant of this instant

that forever is still here.

Outside the window, the desolate

rooftops and the hurrying clouds.

The day goes out, the city

lights up, remote and near.

Weightless hour. I breathe

the moment, empty and eternal.

~ Octavio Paz

translation by Eliot Weinberger

with thanks again to growing-orbits

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listen to me as one listens to the rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,

not attentive, not distracted,

light footsteps, thin drizzle,

water that is air, air that is time,

the day is still leaving,

the night has yet to arrive,

figurations of mist

at the turn of the corner,

figurations of time

at the bend in this pause,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

without listening, hear what I say

with eyes open inward, asleep

with all five senses awake,

it’s raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,

air and water, words with no weight:

what we are and are,

the days and years, this moment,

weightless time and heavy sorrow,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

wet asphalt is shining,

steam rises and walks away,

night unfolds and looks at me,

you are you and your body of steam,

you and your face of night,

you and your hair, unhurried lightning,

you cross the street and enter my forehead,

footsteps of water across my eyes,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the asphalt’s shining, you cross the street,

it is the mist, wandering in the night,

it is the night, asleep in your bed,

it is the surge of waves in your breath,

your fingers of water dampen my forehead,

your fingers of flame burn my eyes,

your fingers of air open eyelids of time,

a spring of visions and resurrections,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the years go by, the moments return,

do you hear the footsteps in the next room?

not here, not there: you hear them

in another time that is now,

listen to the footsteps of time,

inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,

listen to the rain running over the terrace,

the night is now more night in the grove,

lightning has nestled among the leaves,

a restless garden adrift—go in,

your shadow covers this page.

~ Octavio Paz

 translation by Eliot Weinberger

with thanks to growing-orbits

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Motion

.

If you are the amber mare

I am the road of blood

If you are the first snow

I am he who lights the hearth of dawn

If you are the tower of night

I am the spike burning in your mind

If you are the morning tide

I am the first bird's cry

If you are the basket of oranges

I am the knife of the sun

If you are the stone altar

I am the sacrilegious hand

If you are the sleeping land

I am the green cane

If you are the wind's leap

I am the buried fire

If you are the water's mouth

I am the mouth of moss

If you are the forest of the clouds

I am the axe that parts it

If you are the profaned city

I am the rain of consecration

If you are the yellow mountain

I am the red arms of lichen

If you are the rising sun

I am the road of blood

.

~ Octavio Paz

translated by Eliot Weinberger, 

from Collected Poems 1957-1987.

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Between going and staying

.

.

Between going and staying the day wavers,

in love with its own transparency.

.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

.

All is visible and all elusive,

all is near and can't be touched.

.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

.

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theater of reflections.

.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

.

The moment scatters. Motionless,

I stay and go: I am a pause

.

~ Octavio Paz
thanks to http://deathdeconstructed.blogspot.com

.

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Wind and Water and Stone

.

.

The water hollowed the stone,

the wind dispersed the water,

the stone stopped the wind.

Water and wind and stone.

.

The wind sculpted the stone,

the stone is a cup of water,

The water runs off and is wind.

Stone and wind and water.

.

The wind sings in its turnings,

the water murmurs as it goes,

the motionless stone is quiet.

Wind and water and stone.

.

One is the other and is neither:

among their empty names

they pass and disappear,

water and stone and wind. 

.

~ Octavio Paz

(Translated by Mark Strand, 

The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987)

.

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Beautiful face

.

.

Beautiful face
That like a daisy opens its petals to the sun
So do you
Open your face to me as I turn the page.

. 

Enchanting smile
Any man would be under your spell,
Oh, beauty of a magazine.

 .

How many poems have been written to you?
How many Dantes have written to you, Beatrice?
To your obsessive illusion
To your manufactured fantasy.

 .

But today I won't make one more Cliché
And write this poem to you.
No, no more clichés.

. 

This poem is dedicated to those women
Whose beauty is in their charm,
In their intelligence,
In their character,
Not on their fabricated looks.

. 

This poem is to you women,
That like a Shahrazade wake up
Everyday with a new story to tell,
A story that sings for change
That hopes for battles:
Battles for the love of the united flesh
Battles for passions aroused by a new day
Battles for the neglected rights
Or just battles to survive one more night.

 .

Yes, to you women in a world of pain
To you, bright star in this ever-spending universe
To you, fighter of a thousand-and-one fights
To you, friend of my heart.

 .

From now on, my head won't look down to a magazine
Rather, it will contemplate the night
And its bright stars,
And so, no more clichés.

. 

~ Octavio Paz 

.

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