by Octavio Paz
Amante, todo calla. Tú, sin nombre,
en la noche desnuda de palabras.
III
Ésta es tu sangre,
desconocida y honda,
que penetra tu cuerpo
y baña orillas ciegas
de ti misma ignoradas.
Inocente, remota,
en su denso insistir, en su carrera,
detiene a la carrera de mi sangre.
Una pequeña herida
y conoce a la luz,
al aire que la ignora, a mis miradas.
Ésta es tu sangre, y éste
el prófugo rumor que la delata.
Y se agolpan los tiempos
y vuelven al origen de los días,
como tu pelo eléctrico si vibra
la escondida raíz en que se ahonda,
porque la vida gira en ese instante,
y el tiempo es una muerte de los tiempos
y se olvidan los nombres y las formas.
Ésta es tu sangre, digo,
y el alma se suspende en el vacío
ante la viva nada de tu sangre.
de Bajo tu clara sombra
I
Bajo tu clara sombra
vivo como la llama al aire,
en tenso aprendizaje de lucero.
III
Mira el poder del mundo,
mira el poder del polvo, mira el agua.
Mira los fresnos en callado círculo,
toca su reino de silencio y savia,
toca su piel de sol y lluvia y tiempo,
mira sus verdes ramas cara al cielo,
oye cantar sus hojas como agua.
Mira después la nube,
anclada en el espacio sin mareas,
alta espuma visible
de celestes corrientes invisibles.
Mira el poder del mundo,
mira su forma tensa,
su hermosura inconsciente, luminosa.
Toca mi piel, de barro, de diamante,
oye mi voz en fuentes subterráneas,
mira mi boca en esa lluvia obscura,
mi sexo en esa brusca sacudida
con que desnuda el aire los jardines.
Toca tu desnudez en la del agua,
desnúdate de ti, llueve en ti misma,
mira tus piernas como dos arroyos,
mira tu cuerpo como un largo río,
son dos islas gemelas tus dos pechos,
en la noche tu sexo es una estrella,
alba, luz rosa entre dos mundos ciegos,
mar profundo que duerme entre dos mares.
Mira el poder del mundo:
reconócete ya, al reconocerme.
de Oda a España
Si. Los hechos hablan.
Calladamente hablan
los duros hechos de esta guerra.
Este cielo nocturno,
eléctrico, pesado,
que nos hunde los hombros
en su jadeo callado de amenaza;
el abandono de esta casa,
por la que corre el aire ciego
y habita la parálisis;
la soledad insomne;
el rumor de las voces en tinieblas;
este muerto que grita en cada esquina,
que vigila la angustia y la renueva;
este silencio desgarrado y negro
y estos duros ojos impasibles,
que esperan ya a la muerte,
son testimonio vivo. Hablan.
Elegía a un compañero muerto en el frente de Aragón
I
Has muerto, camarada,
en el ardiente amanecer del mundo.
Y brotan de tu muerte
tu mirada, tu traje azul,
tu rostro sorprendido por la pólvora,
tus manos, ya sin tacto.
Has muerto. Irremediablemente.
Parada está tu voz, tu sangre en tierra.
¿Qué tierra crecerá que no te alce?
¿Qué sangre correrá que no te nombre?
¿Qué palabra diremos que no diga
tu nombre, tu silencio,
el callado dolor de no tenerte?
Y alzándote,
llorándote,
nombrándote,
dando voz a tu cuerpo desgarrado,
labios y libertad a tu silencio,
crecen dentro de mí,
me lloran y me nombran,
furiosamente me alzan,
otros cuerpos y nombres,
otros ojos de tierra sorprendida,
otros ojos de árbol que pregunta.
II
Yo recuerdo tu voz. La luz del valle
nos tocaba las sienes,
hiriéndonos espadas resplandores,
trocando en luces sombras,
paso en danza, quietud en escultura
y la violencia tímida del aire
en cabelleras, nubes, torsos, nada.
Olas de luz clarísimas, vacías,
que nuestra sed quemaban, como vidrio,
hundiéndonos, sin voces, fuego puro,
en lentos torbellinos resonantes.
Yo recuerdo tu voz, tu duro gesto,
el ademán severo de tus manos.
Tu voz, voz adversaria,
tu palabra enemiga,
tu pura voz de odio,
tu frente generosa como un sol
y tu amistad abierta como plaza
de cipreses severos y agua joven.
Tu corazón, tu voz, tu puño vivo,
detenidos y rotos por la muerte.
III
Has muerto, camarada,
en el ardiente amanecer del mundo.
Has muerto cuando apenas
tu mundo, nuestro mundo, amanecía.
Llevabas en los ojos, en el pecho,
tras el gesto implacable de la boca,
un claro sonreír, un alba pura.
Te imagino cercado por las balas,
por la rabia y el odio pantanoso,
como relámpago caído y agua
prisionera de rocas y negrura.
Te imagino tirado en lodazales,
sin máscara, sonriente,
tocando, ya sin tacto,
las manos camaradas que soñabas.
Has muerto entre los tuyos, por los tuyos
México, 1937
Jardín
A Juan Gil-Albert
Nubes a la deriva, continentes
sonámbulos, países sin substancia
ni peso, geografías dibujadas
por el sol y borradas por el viento.
Cuatro muros de adobe. Buganvilias:
en sus llamas pacíficas mis ojos
se bañan. Pasa el viento entre alabanzas
de follajes y yerbas de rodillas.
El heliotropo con morados pasos
cruza envuelto en su aroma. Hay un profeta:
el fresno—y un meditabundo: el pino.
El jardín es pequeño, el cielo inmenso.
Verdor sobreviviente en mis escombros:
en mis ojos te miras y te tocas,
te conoces en mí y en mí te piensas,
en mí duras y en mí te desvaneces.
Poems
[1941–1948]
The Bird
In the transparent silence
day rested:
the transparency of space
was the transparency of silence.
The unmoving light of the sky soothed
the growing of the grasses.
The bugs of the earth, among the stones,
under the unchanging light, were stones
.
Time was sated in the minute.
Noon consumed itself
in the self-absorbed stillness.
And a bird sang, slender arrow.
A wounded breast of silver, the sky quivered,
the leaves shook,
the grass woke up . . .
And I felt that death was an arrow
that doesn’t know who shot it,
and when our eyes open we die.
Two Bodies
Two bodies face to face
are at times two waves
and night is the ocean.
Two bodies face to face
are at times two stones
and night the desert.
Two bodies face to face
are at times roots
in the night entangled.
Two bodies face to face
are at times knives
and the night lightning.
Two bodies face to face
are two stars that fall
in an empty sky.
Life Glimpsed
Lightning or fish
in the night of the sea
and birds, lightning
in the night of the forest.
Bones are lightning
in the night of the body.
Oh world, everything is night
and life is lightning.
Epitaph for a Poet
He wanted to sing, to sing
to forget
his true life of lies
and to remember
his lying life of truths.
Sea in the Afternoon
for Juan José Arreola
Tall walls of water, tall towers,
sudden black water against nothing,
impenetrable, green, gray water,
sudden white water, dazzling.
Water like the origin of water,
like the origin itself, before water,
water flooded by water, washing away
what water pretends to be.
The thunderous tiger of water,
the thunderous claws of the tiger,
the hundred paws of water, the hundred tigers
with a single paw against nothing.
Naked sea, sea thirsty for sea,
deep with stars and tall with foam,
white escapee from the seascape prison,
in starry boundaries exploding,
what memories, what imprisoned desires,
ignite the green flames in your skin?
You crash in yourself, rise against yourself
and from yourself never escape.
Time that freezes over, or time hurling down,
time that is the sea and sea that is an iceberg from the moon,
raging mother, huge and wounded beast
whose entrails time consumes.
While I Write
When over the paper the pen goes writing
in any solitary hour,
who drives the pen?
To whom is he writing, he who writes for me,
this shore made of lips, made of dream,
a hill of stillness, abyss,
shoulder on which to forget the world forever?
Someone in me is writing, moves my hand,
hears a word, hesitates,
halted between green mountains and blue sea.
With icy fervor
contemplates what I write.
All is burned in this fire of justice.
But this judge is nevertheless the victim
and in condemning me condemns himself:
He writes to anyone, he calls nobody,
to his own self he writes, and in himself forgets,
and is redeemed, becoming again me.
[MR]
The Street
It’s a long and silent street.
I walk in the dark and trip and fall
and get up and step blindly
on the mute stones and dry leaves
and someone behind me is also walking:
if I stop, he stops;
if I run, he runs. I turn around: no one.
Everything is black, there is no exit,
and I turn and turn corners
that always lead to the street
where no one waits for me, no one follows,
where I follow a man who trips
and gets up and says when he sees me: no one.
Lightning at Rest
Stretched out,
stone made of noon,
half-open eyes whose whiteness turns to blue,
half-ready smile.
Your body rouses, you shake your lion’s mane.
Again lying down,
a fine striation of lava in the rock,
a sleeping ray of light.
And while you sleep I stroke you, I polish you,
slim axe,
arrow with whom I set the night on fire.
The sea fighting far off with its swords and feathers.
[MR]
Interrupted Elegy
Today I remember the dead in my house.
We’ll never forget the first death,
though he died in a flash, so suddenly
he never reached his bed or the holy oil.
I hear his cane hesitating on a step of the staircase,
the body gaining strength with a sigh,
the door that opens, the corpse that enters.
From a door to dying there’s little space
and hardly enough time to sit down,
raise your head, look at the clock,
and realize: it’s eight-fifteen.
Today I remember the dead in my house.
The woman who died night after night
and her dying was a long goodbye,
a train that never left.
The greed of her mouth,
hanging on the thread of a sigh,
her eyes never closing, making signs,
wandering from the lamp to my eyes,
a fixed gaze that embraces another gaze,
far off, that suffocates in the embrace
and in the end escapes and watches from the riverbank
how the soul sinks and loses its body
and finds no eyes to grab hold on . . .
Was that gaze inviting me to die?
Perhaps we die only because no one
wants to die with us, no one
wants to look us in the eye.
Today I remember the dead in my house.
The one who left for a few hours
and no one knew into what silence he had gone.
After dinner, each night,
the colorless pause that leads to emptiness
or the endless sentence half-hanging
from the spider’s thread of silence
opens a corridor for him to return:
we hear his footsteps, he climbs, he stops . . .
And someone among us gets up
and closes the door shut.
But he, on the other side, insists.
He lies in wait in every recess and hollow,
he wanders among yawns, at the edge of things.
Though we shut the door, he insists.
Today I remember the dead in my house.
Faces forgotten in my mind, faces
without eyes, staring eyes, emptied out:
Am I searching in them for my secret,
the god of blood my blood moves,
the god of ice, the god who devours me?
His silence is the mirror of my life,
in
my life his death is prolonged,
I am the final error of his errors.
Today I remember the dead in my house.
The scattered thoughts, the scattered
act, the names strewn
(lacunae, empty zones, holes
where stubborn memory rummages),
the dispersion of encounters,
the ego with its abstract wink, always shared
with another ego that is the same, the rages,
desire and its masks, the buried
snake, the slow erosions,
the hope, the fear, the act
and its opposite: within me they persist,
they beg to eat the bread, the fruit, the body,
to drink the water that was denied to them.
But there is no water now, everything is dry,
the bread is tasteless, the fruit bitter,
love domesticated, masticated,
in cages with invisible bars,
the onanist ape and the trained bitch,
what you devour devours you,
your victim is also your executioner.
Heap of dead days, crumpled newspapers,
and nights stripped of bark,
and in the dawn of the swollen eyelids,
the gesture with which we undo
the running knot, the necktie,
and now the lights have gone out in the streets
—greet the sun, spider, be not rancorous—
and more dead than living go off to bed.
The world is a circular desert,
heaven is closed and hell empty.
Nocturnal Water
The night with the trembling eyes of a horse in the night,
the night with eyes of water in the sleeping fields,
is in your eyes of a trembling horse,
is in your eyes of secret water.
Eyes of shadow water,
eyes of well water,
eyes of dream water.
Silence and solitude,
like two small animals guided by the moon,
drink from those eyes,
drink from those waters.
If you open your eyes,
night opens its doors of moss,
opens the secret kingdom of water
that flows from the center of night.
If you close them,
