A poem, Paz thought, abolishes time. Or rather, transforms it, and the world with it. And so the final stanza of "A Draft of Shadows" comes to mind, more precise in defining the man than any cluster of facts:
I am where I was:I walk behind the murmur,
footsteps within me, heard with my eyes,
the murmur is in the mind, I am my footsteps,
I hear the voices that I think,
the voices that think me as I think them.
I am the shadow my words cast.
