Octavio Paz
Desire turns us into ghosts. — Octavio Paz, from “A Draft of Shadows,” The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957-1987 (New Directions, 1987)
Tag: Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
I spell out, not words, but stars : — Octavio Paz, “On the Wing(2),” A Tree Within (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)
Octavio Paz
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)
Octavio Paz
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
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
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
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
Octavio Paz
Memory invents another present.As it invents myself. What has been livedblurs with today. — Octavio Paz, from “Preparatory Exercise,” A Tree Within, trans. Eliot Weinberger (New Directions, 1988)
Octavio Paz
To sleep to sleep in youor even better to wake to open my eyesat your center black white blackwhite To be the unsleeping sunyour memory ignites (andthe memory of me in your memory) — Octavio Paz, from “Maithuna,” Selected Poems, ed. Eliot Weinberger (New Directions, 1984) Deserve your dream. — Octavio Paz, from “Toward the… Continue reading Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Aubade with a Book and the Rattle from a String of Pearls The color of the moon bleached the tops of treesand you left a book on the table, face downwith its spine reaching for air. I thought the book might hate you for that. With my pre-dawn coffeeand mouth full of sleep syllables I… Continue reading Octavio Paz
The Vale of Soul-Making 