Between Going and Staying
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
-Octavio Paz
trans. Eliot Weinberger
2 comments:
Thanks for the great poem. I check your blog each day so am overjoyed when there is something new. Keep it up, youse guys!
I like this poem too. I love the line "I find myself in the middle of an eye". Makes me think of my favorite Nabokov book The Eye. I made a copy of my favorite page which is attached to the wall of my desk...
"And then will come the day when the last person who remembers me will die. A fetus in reverse, my image, too, will dwindle and die within that last witness of the crime I committed by the mere fact of living"
Depressing, but gorgeous, isn't it?
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