Some more poems...

Coming and Going


Muddy November:
stained stone, bruised bone,
uncertain palaces.

I crossed through arches and over bridges,
I was alive, in search of life.

In a lunar room
the light lost its blood. Fish-men
exchanged cold reflections.

I was alive and saw many ghosts,
all made of flesh and bone, all of them greedy.

Tower of topaz and blood,
black tresses and amber breasts,
the subterranean lady.

Tiger, heifer, octopus, ivy in flames:
she burned my bones, sucked my blood.

Bed an extinct planet,
night and body a mirror-trick,
lady a mountain of salt.

- From Salamander
The Collected poems of Octavio Paz

The sun of the high plains eats my remains:
I was alive and went in search of death.

Some more poems...

Last Dawn

Your hair lost in the forest,
your feet touching mine.
Asleep you are bigger than the night,
but your dream fits within this room.
How much we are who are so little!
Outside a taxi passes
with its load of ghosts.
The river that runs by
                                is always
running back.

Will tomorrow be another day?


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                                                   Image copyright: Flintarts.org





Interior


Warring thoughts try
to split my skull

This writing moves
through streets of birds

My hand thinks out loud
a word calls to another

On this page where I write
I see beings that come and go

The book and the notebook
unfold their wings and rest

The lamps are lit the hour
opens and closes like a bed

With red stockings and a pale face
you and the night come in


- From Salamander
The Collected poems of Octavio Paz
1957-1987
Edited by Eliot Weinberger