Octavio Paz

Beautiful face

So do youOpen your face to me as I turn the page.Enchanting smileAny man would be under your spell,Oh, beauty of a magazine.How many poems have been written to you?How many Dantes have written to you, Beatrice?To your obsessive illusionTo you manufacture fantasy.But today I won’t make one more ClichéAnd write this poem to you.No,…

Piedra De Sol

La treizième revient…c’est encor la première;et c’est toujours la seule-ou c’est le seul moment;car es-tu reine, ô toi, la première ou dernière?es-tu roi, toi le seul ou le dernier amant?Gérard de Nerval, ArthèmisUn sauce de cristal, un chopo de agua,un alto surtidor que el viento arquea,un árbol bien plantado mas danzante,un caminar de río que…

There’s a motionless tree

A river of treesHits my chestThe green surgeIs good fortuneYou are dressed in redYou areThe seal of the scorched yearThe carnal firebrandThe star fruitIn you like sunThe hour restsAbove an abyss of claritiesThe height is clouded by birdsTheir beaks construct the nightTheir wings carry the dayPlanted in the crest of lightBetween firmness and vertigoYou areTransparent…

I turn the page of the day,

by the motion of your eyelashes.I enter you,the truthfulness of the dark.I want proofs of darkness, wantto drink the black wine:take my eyes and crush them.A drop of nighton your breast’s tip:mysteries of the carnation.Closing my eyesI open them inside your eyes.Always awakeon its garnet bed:your wet tongue.There are fountainsin the garden of your veins.With…

Space

Ceaselessly devouring and engendering itselfWhirlpool spaceAnd drop into heightSpacesClarities steeply cutSuspendedBy the night’s flankBlack gardens of rock crystalFlowering on a rod of smokeWhite gardens exploding in the airSpaceOne space opening upCorollaAnd dissolvingSpace in spaceAll is nowherePlace of impalpable nuptials