Mirror of the night.Your eyes green swords insidemy flesh… Your word travels the entirety ofspace and reaches my cellswhich are my stars, then goes toyours which are my light. —Frida Kahlo, to Diego from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-portrait (Abrams, August 9, 2005) Originally published January 1, 1995.
my love is a mad sunflower that forgetsfragments of sun in the silence” — Isabel Fraire, “My Love Reveals Objects,” Isabel Fraire: Poems (Mundus Artium Press, 1975)
Desire turns us into ghosts. — Octavio Paz, from “A Draft of Shadows,” The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957-1987 (New Directions, 1987)
I spell out, not words, but stars : — Octavio Paz, “On the Wing(2),” A Tree Within (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)
Trees heavy with birds holdthe afternoon up with their hands. — Octavio Paz, from “THE TOMB Of AMIR KHUSRU,” A Tale of Two Gardens (NewDirections, 1997)
I follow my raving, rooms, streets,I grope my way through corridors of time,I climb and descend its stairs, I touchits walls and do not move, I go backto where I began, I search for your face,I walk through the streets of myselfunder an ageless sun, and by my sideyou walk like a tree, you walk… Continue reading Octavio Paz
We are time and cannot escape its dominion. We can transfigure it but not deny it or destroy it. This is what the great artists, poets, philosophers, scientists, and certain men of action have done. Love, too, is an answer: because it is time and made of time, love is at once consciousness of death… Continue reading Octavio Paz
Human love is the union of two beings subject to time and its accidents: change, sickness, death. Although it does not save us from time, it opens it a crack, so that in a flash love’s contradictory nature is manifest: that vivacity which endlessly destroys itself and is reborn, which is always both now and… Continue reading Octavio Paz
We are time and cannot escape its dominion. We can transfigure it but not deny it or destroy it. This is what the great artists, poets, philosophers, scientists, and certain men of action have done. Love, too, is an answer: because it is time and made of time, love is at once consciousness of death… Continue reading Octavio Paz
All happiness lasts but a moment, and the time that follows is only good for remembering what we have lost. — Homero Aridjis, Persephone (Vintage, 1986)
The Vale of Soul-Making 