Octavio Paz: "Brotherhood"

Homage to Claudius Ptolemy


I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.


 
"Brotherhood" by Octavio Paz. Text as published in Octavio Paz: Collected Poems, 1957-1987, edited and translated from the original Spanish by Eliot Weinberger (New Directions, 1991).

Art credit: "Admiring the Galaxy," photograph taken on May 20, 2013, by European Southern Observatory / Alan Fitzsimmons. From the caption: "This image is a self portrait taken by astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons ... at ESO’s La Silla Observatory [located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile]."

Octavio Paz: "Friendship"

It is the awaited hour
Over the table falls
Interminably
The lamp’s spread hair
Night turns the window to immensity
There is no one here
Presence without name surrounds me

"Friendship" by Octavio Paz, from Configurations (New Directions, 1971).

Art credit: "Leave the Light on," photograph by Peter Baker.

Octavio Paz: "Wind, Water, Stone"

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind.

Water, wind, stone.



Wind carves stone,

stone's a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.



Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by,

unmoving stone keeps still.

Wind, water, stone.



One is another and no other:

crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:

water, stone, wind.

"Wind, Water, Stone" by Octavio Paz, from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957-1987, edited by Eliot Weinberger. Translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger, et al. © New Directions Publishing, 1991.  

Photography credit: "Wind- and water-carved stone in the Weather Pit Ridge, located near Lake Powell, Utah," by Darrell Staggs (originally color).

Octavio Paz: "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.

"Between Going and Staying" by Octavio Paz, from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987, translated by Eliot Weinberger. © New Directions Publishing, 1991.

Photography credit: "Shadows Low on the Office Wall," by Kevin J. Miyazaki (originally black and white).