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.
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