all the pretty horses, cormac mccarthy, p. 6
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: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).
Perhaps to love is to learn
to walk through this world.
To learn to be silent
like the oak and the linden of the fable.
To learn to see.
Your glance scattered seeds.
It planted a tree.
I talk
because you shake its leaves.
-- Octavio Paz
Hermandad/Brotherhood
Soy hombre: duro poco
y es enorme la noche.
Pero miro hacia arriba:
las estrellas escriben.
Sin entender comprendo:
también soy escritura
y en este mismo instante
alguien me deletrea.
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
Translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger.
Pablo Medina
Three Fulcrums
This city is a French
horn in distress,
Calvin chasing hens
and the pages of the hymnal blank
like a furious whoosh,
a stomach pain, the pitch of sin.
Russian Doll
Every wall is an eye,
every eye is a wall.
I have only myself tonight
in a language inside a language
about the white sky falling
and the black earth.
Breviary
And when I run out of things
to say, what do I say?
And when the thrush sings
in the know-it-all woods,
isn't there a slippage
from language to departure?
Pablo Medina
A Poem for the Epiphany
Ach, wie anders, wie schönIt snows because the door to heaven is open,
Lebt der Himmel, lebt die Erde
-Goethe
It snows because the wind wants
to be water, because water
wants to be powder and powder wants
to seduce the eye. Because once in his life
the philosopher has to admit
to the poverty of thought.
Because the rich man cannot buy snow
and the poor man has to wear it on his eyebrows.
Because it makes the old dog think
his life has just begun. He runs
back and forth across the parking lot.
He rolls on the snow. He laps it up.
It snows because light and dark
are making love in a field where old age
has no meaning, where colors blur,
silence covers sound, sleep covers sorrow,
everything is death, everything is joy.
(for Ellen Jacko)
Entrance
The day my father died, I began to love
many men and I knew there would be no end.
Allow me room to breathe, my father asked
wishing that I let go of his wrists.
The man, now, in my bed rolls over and begins
to snore. The white of the walls are more white
than when I painted them. In my room I write
to believe you are living.
It’s 4:00 a.m. and no one’s awake.
I go to sleep and in a dream,
I am someone saying, Do you know
the smallest, most lovely canary can sing
the most deadly songs at night?
I can hear it loudly, tapping
outside my locked window.
Someone has hung up a painting.
Someone has provided a palette
that is come-hither blue, sunflower yellow,
warm-your-belly green peas.
A bell rings through the rain.
I wish to tell the world I’m sick to death of it.
The heart that does not wish anymore,
does not want. But it is the perception of you
that makes me mismatch my words.
Waiting for you: nests fitted into wooden trees,
my hair thrashes past me.
Spilling awake, the sound
of rain on the large sea expands.
I’m afraid one of these days,
I’ll say everything I ever wanted to say.
In my favorite corner of the world you are there, you believe me.
The Burning
“…I’ve lived without names…”
-Stephen Kuusisto
Off a seashore in Russia I run, laughing
at the mystery of movement in the form
of water, laughing at my father with sand
on his face who will one day die.
Or imagine for a minute a locomotive
full of people, rocking with the motion
of a vintage sorrow, head bowing as if
time has beaten them. In my winter season
I think of monks in Penang who sit without
sound for weeks. How they live inside silence.
The silence is alive. The ringing of a bell
is an intricate acorn; my soul hits the ground
when it falls. The apple for all its perfection
will never change. The seed I swallow fashions
a knot in my throat, the fiber of the peel winds
like a staircase leading me down. I look
at my teeth-marks in fruit, in flesh
like a message, an erotic code deciphered
by tearing and biting down. I want to keep
this braille, this transcript of my soul:
My body is a vessel of wanting.
My body is a vessel of fury.
My body is a vessel of apology.
I am the thread & the damage the thread made after the mending.