The Poems of Octavio Paz
Page 2
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First Poems
[1931–1940]
Game
I’ll plunder seasons.
I’ll play with months and years.
Winter days with the red faces of summer.
And down the gray road,
in the silent parade
of hard, unmoving days,
I’ll organize the blues and gymnastics.
A rippling morning
of painted lips,
cool, as though just bathed,
with an autumn dawn.
And I’ll catch the clouds—
red, blue, purple—
and throw them against the inexpressive paper
of the black and blue sky,
so that they’ll write a letter
in the universal language
to their good friend the wind.
To help the shopkeepers,
I’ll make luminous billboards,
with spotlights of stars.
Maybe I’ll assassinate a dawn
so that, bleeding,
it will stain a white cloud purple.
In the shop of the seasons,
I’ll sell ripe autumn apples
wrapped in the paper of winter mists.
I’ll kidnap Spring,
to have her in my house,
like a ballerina.
The wind will change its schedule.
Unpredictable crossings of the clouds.
And down the highway of the Future, I’ll rush toward Winter,
for the surprise of meeting it later,
mixed with Summer.
On the green felt of space,
I’ll bet on days
that will roll like dice.
I’ll play with months and years
First published poem, 1931
Nocturne
Shadow, flickering shadow of voices.
The black river drags its sunken marbles.
How to speak of the assassinated air,
of the orphaned words,
how to speak of the dream?
Shadow, flickering shadow of voices.
Black scale of flaming irises.
How to speak the names, the stars,
the ivory birds of nocturnal pianos
and the obelisk of silence?
Shadow, flickering shadow of voices.
Statues pulled down from the moon.
How to speak, camellia,
the least flower among flowers,
how to speak your white geometry?
How to speak, oh Dream, your silence out loud?
1932
Autumn
The wind wakes,
sweeps the thoughts from my mind
and hangs me
in a light that smiles for no one:
what random beauty!
Autumn: between your cold hands
the world flames.
1933
Your Name
Born from me, from my shadow,
woken by my skin,
dawn of sleepwalking light.
Wild dove your name,
quivering on my shoulder.
Monologue
Under the broken columns,
between nothing and the dream,
the syllables of your name cross
my sleepless hours.
Your long reddish hair,
summer lightning,
quivers with sweet violence
on the back of night.
Dark current of the dream
that flows through the ruins
and constructs you out of nothing:
damp nocturnal coastline
where the blind sea beats,
spreading out.
The Root of Man
I
Closer than music and the dance,
here, in the immobility,
the place of tense music,
under the great tree of my blood,
you rest. I am naked
and in my veins a power throbs,
the daughter of immobility.
This is the most immobile sky,
and this the purest nakedness.
You, dead, under the great tree of my blood.
II
Let all the voices burn
and singe my lips;
and night remain stopped
in the tallest flower.
No one yet knows your name;
your secret force moved
by the ripened gold of the stars
and the hanging night,
immobile ocean.
My love, everything grows still
in the burning voice of your name.
My love, everything grows still. You, with no name,
in the naked night of words.
III
This is your blood,
unknown, deep,
penetrating your body,
washing the unsuspecting,
unseeing banks of your self.
Innocent, far off,
in its dense insistence, in its route,
it pauses along the route of my blood.
A small wound,
it meets the light,
the air it never knew, my glances.
This is your blood, and this
the fugitive’s whisper denouncing it.
And the times cluster
and return to the origin of days,
the hidden root quivers
like your electric hair where it is buried,
for life turns on that moment,
and time is a death of the times
and names and shapes forget themselves.
This is your blood, it is,
and the soul hangs in the emptiness
before the living nothing of your blood.
from Beneath Your Bright Shadow
I
Beneath your bright shadow
I live like a flame in the air,
in the tense apprenticeship of a morning star.
III
Look at the power of the world,
look at the power of the dust, look at the water.
Look at the ash trees in their quiet circle,
touch their kingdom of silence and sap,
touch their skin of sun and rain and time,
look at their green branches facing the sky,
listen to their leaves singing like water.
Look, then, at the cloud
anchored in tideless space,
the visible foam of invisible
celestial currents.
Look at the power of the world,
look at its tense form,
its unconscious, luminous beauty.
Touch my skin of clay, of diamond,
hear my voice in its subterranean sources,
look at my mouth in that dark rain,
my sex in that sudden trembling
with which the air undresses gardens.
Touch your nakedness in the nakedness of water,
undress yourself from yourself, rain down on yourself,
look at your legs like two streams,
look at your body like a long river,
your breasts are twin islands,
in the night your sex is a star,
dawn, pink light between two blind worlds,
deep sea asleep between two seas.
Look at the power of the world,
knowing yourself knowing me.
from Ode to Spain
Yes. The facts speak.
They quietly speak
the hard facts of this war.
This sky at night,
electric, heavy,
that weighs down the shoulders
with its quiet gasping of terror,
the dereliction of this house
through which the blind air runs
and paralysis inhabits;
the sleepless solitude;
the murmur of voices in the darkness;
this corpse who screams on every corner,
who watches over death-throes, makes them new;
this black and mangled silence;
and these hard impassive eyes
that wait for death.
They are living testimony. They speak.
Elegy for a Friend Dead at the Front in Aragón
I
You have died, comrade,
in the burning dawn of the world.
And from your death sprouts
your glance, your blue suit,
your face surprised by gunpowder,
your hands that now have no touch.
You’ve died. Irremediably.
Your voice still, your blood on the land.
What fields will grow that you won’t harvest?
What blood will run without your heirs?
What word will we say that doesn’t say
your name, your silence,
the quiet pain of not having you?
And raising you,
weeping for you,
naming you,
giving voice to your crushed body,
and lips and freedom to your silence,
they grow within me,
they weep for me, they name me,
furiously they raise me,
other voices and names,
others eyes of the surprised land,
other eyes of the tree that asks.
II
I remember your voice. The light in the valley
touched our temples,
brilliant swords wounding us,
confusing in shadow and light,
a dancing step, a sculptured stillness,
and the timid violence of the air
in clouds, hair, bodies, nothing.
Waves of clear, empty light
that our thirst burned like glass,
sinking us, voiceless, pure fire,
in slow resonant whirlwinds.
I remember your voice, your stern face,
the severe gestures of your hands.
Your voice, an adversarial voice,
your enemy words,
your pure voice of hate,
your mind generous as the sun,
and your friendship as open as a plaza
of severe cypresses and young water.
Your heart, your voice, your living fist,
stopped and crushed by death.
III
You have died, comrade,
in the burning dawn of the world.
You have died just as your world,
our world, has barely dawned.
You used to carry it in your eyes, in your chest,
in the unyielding expression of your mouth,
a clear smile, a pure dawn.
I imagine you hemmed in by bullets,
by anger and the swamp of hate
like a fallen ray of lightning and water,
prisoner of rock and blackness.
I imagine you shot in the mudflats,
maskless, smiling,
touching, now without touch,
the comrade hands you dream.
You have died among yours and for yours.
Mexico City, 1937
Garden
for Juan Gil-Albert
Clouds adrift, sleepwalking continents,
nations with no substance, no weight,
geographies drawn by the sun
and erased by the wind.
Four walls of adobe. Bougainvillea:
my eyes bathe in its peaceful flames.
The wind moves through leaves of exaltation
and bended knees of grass.
The heliotrope with purple steps
crosses over, enveloped in its aroma.
There is a prophet: the ash tree,
and a contemplative: the pine.
The garden is small, the sky immense.
Lush survivor amid my rubble:
in my eyes you see yourself, touch yourself,
know yourself in me and in me think of yourself,
in me you last and in me you vanish.
* * * *
Juego
Saquearé a las estaciones.
Jugaré con los meses y los años.
Días de invierno con caras rojas de verano.
Y por la senda gris,
entre la muda procesión
de los días duros e inmóviles
colocará a los azules y gimnásticos.
Una mañana ondulante
y de labios pintados,
fresca, como acabada de bañar,
con un crepúsculo otoñal.
Y cogeré a las nubes
—rojas, azules, moradas—
y las arrojaré en el papel inexpresivo
del lívido firmamento,
para que escriban una carta,
en el lenguaje universal,
a su buen amigo el viento.
Para ayudar a los burgueses,
haré anuncios luminosos,
con foquitos de estrellas.
Quizá asesine a un crepúsculo,
para que, desangrado,
tíña de púrpura una nube blanca.
Venderé en la tienda de las estaciones,
manzanas maduras de otoño
envuelto en papel de neblina invernal.
Me raptaré a la Primavera,
para tenerla en casa,
como una bailarina.
El viento alterará sus horarios.
Travesías inseguras de las nubes.
Y por la carretera del Futuro, arrojaré al Invierno,
para tener la sorpresa de encontrarlo después,
mezclado con el Verano.
En el tapete verde del espacio,
apostaré a los días,
que rodarán como los dados.
Jugaré con los meses y los años.
Nocturno
Sombra, trémula sombra de las voces.
Arrastra el río negro mármoles ahogados.
¿Cómo decir del aire asesinado,
de los vocablos huérfanos,
cómo decir del sueño?
Sombra, trémula sombra de las voces.
Negra escala de lirios llameantes.
¿Cómo decir los nombres, las estrellas,
los albos pájaros de los pianos nocturnos
y el obelisco del silencio?
Sombra, trémula sombra de las voces.
Estatuas derribadas de la luna.
¿Cómo decir, camelia,
la menos flor entre las flores,
cómo decir tus blancas geometrías?
¿Cómo decir, oh Sueño, tu silencio en voces?
1932
Otoño
El viento despierta,
barre los pensa
mientos de mi frente
y me suspende
en la luz que sonríe para nadie:
¡cuánta belleza suelta!
Otoño: entre tus manos frías
el mundo llamea.
1933
Tu nombre
Nace de mí, de mi sombra,
amanece por mi piel,
alba de luz somnolienta.
Paloma brava tu nombre,
tímida sobre mi hombro.
Monólogo
Bajo las rotas columnas,
entre la nada y el sueño,
cruzan mis horas insomnes
las sílabas de tu nombre.
Tu largo pelo rojizo,
relámpago del verano,
vibra con dulce violencia
en la espalda de la noche.
Corriente obscura del sueño
que mana entre las rüinas
y te construye de nada:
húmeda costa nocturna
donde se tiende y golpea
un mar sonámbulo, ciego.
Raíz del hombre
I
Más acá de la música y la danza,
aquí, en la inmovilidad,
sitio de la música tensa,
bajo el gran árbol de mi sangre,
tú reposas. Yo estoy desnudo
y en mis venas golpea la fuerza,
hija de la inmovilidad.
Éste es el cielo más inmóvil,
y ésta la más pura desnudez.
Tú, muerta, bajo el gran árbol de mi sangre.
II
Ardan todas las voces
y quémense los labios;
y en la más alta flor
quede la noche detenida.
Nadie sabe tu nombre ya;
en tu secreta fuerza influyen
la madurez dorada de la estrella
y la noche suspensa,
inmóvil océano.
Amante, todo calla
bajo la voz ardiente de tu nombre.