Midyear

[rejectomorph]

Suppose the characters in our dreams believe themselves living.



Sunday Verse

Tomb of the Poet

by Octavio Paz

The book
         the glass
the green obscurely a stalk
                            the record
sleeping beauty in her bed of music
things drowning in their names
to say them with the eyes
                          in a beyond I cannot tell where
nail them down
               lamp pencil portrait
this that I see
                to nail it down
like a living temple
                     plant it
like a tree
            a god
crown it
         with a name
                     immortal
derisible crown of thorns
                          Speech!

The stalk and its imminent flower
                                  sun-sex-sun
the flower without shadow
                          the word
opens
      in a beyond without where
immaculate extension
transparency which sustains things
fallen
       raised up
by the glance
              held
                   in a reflection
 
Bundle of words
                instants
glowing bunches
moving forests of stars
wandering syllables
                    tide
all the times of time
                      TO BE
a second's fraction
                    lamp pencil portrait
in a here I cannot tell where

                              A name
begins
       seize on it, plant, say it
like a wood that thinks
                        flesh it
A lineage begins
                 in a name
an adam
        like a living temple
name without shadow
                    nailed
like a god
           in this here-without-where
Speech!

        I cease in its beginning
in this that I say
                   I cease
TO BE
      shadow of an instantaneous name
I SHALL NEVER KNOW MY BOND'S UNDOING

-translated by Charles Tomlinson

Comments

You call this living?

[eideteker.livejournal.com]

Do you believe yourself living?

I do.

Re: You call this living?

[rejectomorph]

My dreamer apparently has a high fever.

[marseille.livejournal.com]

Oh, please, don't get me thinking about dreams vs. reality. I used to think about that as a child--which ones were real--and I would count the amount of time SINCE having that thought, then realize I'd just had it again. Very disturbing. When I studied Spanish literature in college I found that their writers were nearly all obsessed with it, too.