Octavio Paz

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,

There's a motionless
And another one coming forwardA river of
Hits my chest The green
Is good

In my body you search the mountainfor the sun buried in its forest
In your body I search for the boatadrift in the middle of the night

More than
More than
More than
Light light   Your body is the trace of your body

Here is a long and silent street
I walk in blackness and I stumble and falland rise, and I walk blind, my feettrampling the silent stones and the dry leaves
Someone behind me also tramples, stones, leaves:if I slow down, he slows;if I ru...

Perhaps to love is to learnto walk through this world
To learn to be silentlike the oak and the linden of the fable
To learn to see
Your glance scattered seeds

No center, no above, no
Ceaselessly devouring and engendering
Whirlpool
And drop into

Between going and staying the day wavers,in love with its own transparency
The circular afternoon is now a baywhere the world in stillness rocks
All is visible and all elusive,all is near and can't be touched
Paper, book, pencil, gl...

Your hair is lost in the forest,your feet touching mine
Asleep you are bigger than the night,but your dream fits within this room
How much we are who are so little
Outside a taxi passeswith its load of ghosts

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,not attentive, not distracted,light footsteps, thin drizzle,water that is air, air that is time,the day is still leaving,the night has yet to arrive,figurations of mistat the turn of the corner,figurations o...

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

At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech andthe vertigo of death; the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbenain submarine gardens; the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandme...