from "sun stone"

by octavio paz

. . .

hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand,

an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-coloured body,
colour of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency,

i go a journey in galleries of sound

. . .

now i collect my fragments one by one
and go on, bodiless, searching, in the dark,

the limitless corridors of memory
the doors that open on empty living-rooms
where every springtime withers and rots away
the jewels of thirst are burning at the base,
the face obliterated at memory,
the hand which will dissolve if i even touch it,
threads of those spider-webs in chaos over
the smiling of a past that falls away,

i search where i come face to face with daylight,
search without finding, i search for a moment,
for a face of lightning-flash and thunderstorm
running among the enormous trees of night,
face of all rain in a garden of shadows,
insistent water that flows along my side,

i search without finding, and i write alone,
no one is here, and the day ends, the year ends,
i have gone down with the moment, all the way down,
the road is invisible over all these mirrors,
they repeat and reflect for ever my broken image,
i pace the days, the moments pave this roadway,
i step upon the thinking of my shadow,
i pace my shadow in search of my one moment

. . .

now there is nothing in me but one vast wound,
a gap with no possible way of healing,
a now without windows, a turn of intellect
moving on itself, repeating and reflecting,
it loses itself in its own transparency,
self-knowledge that is shot through by the eye
that watches itself watching, drowning itself
in clarity

. . .

the eyes are flames and those who gaze are flaming
the ear is fire and the fiery music,
live coal the lips and the tongue firebrand,
the one who touches and the one who is touching,
thinking and thought, and the thinker is a fire
and all things burn and the universe is flame,
and nothing burns like the rest, nothing which is
nothing except a thought in flames, ultimate smoke

. . .

-- and this our life, when was it truly ours?
and when are we truly whatever we are?
for surely we are not, we never are
anything alone but spinning and emptiness,
crazy faces made in the mirror, horror,
vomit; life is not ours, it is the others',
it is not anybody's, all of us are
life -- the bread of the sun for all the others,
all of those others who are us, we ourselves --
i am the other when i am myself, my acts
are more my own when they are everybody's,
because to be myself i must be other,
go out of myself, seek my self among others,
those others who are not if i do not exist,
others give me the fullness of my existence,
i am not, there is no i, we are for ever,
and life is otherwise, always there, farther,
beyond thee, beyond me, eternal horizon,
life that is dying for us, life that is made for
and invents us, our faces, eats them away,
the thirst for existence, death, bread of us all.