A virgin who talked in her sleep, my aunt
taught me to see with eyes closed,
to see within, and through the wall;
my grandfather, to smile at defeat,
and, for disasters: in affliction, conviction.
(This that I say is earth thrown over
your name: let it rest softly).
Between vomit and thirst,
strapped on the rack of alcohol,
my father came and went through flames ...
I could never talk to him.
I meet him now in dreams,
that blurred country of the dead.
We always speak of other things.
Octavio Paz
This, from the autobiographical poem rendered by Eliot Weinberger as "A Draft of Shadows" (1974).
