Toward the Poem II

Words, phrases, syllables, stars turning about a fixed center. Two bodies, many beings meeting in one word. The paper becomes covered with indeible letters, spoken by nobody, dictated by nobody, that burn and flame up and go out. This, then, is how poetry exists, how love exists. And if I do not exist, you do.

Everywhere those in solitary begin to create the words of a new dialogue.

The gush. A mouthful of health. A girl lying on her past. Wine, fire, guitar, tablecloth. A red blush wall in a village square. Cheers, glittering cavalry that enter the city, the people in flight: hymns! Eruption of white, green, fiery. The easiest thing, that which writes itself: poetry.

The poem prepares a loving order. I foresee a man sun and a moon woman, he free of his own power, she free of her slavery, and implacable love shining through black space. Everything must give way before these incandescent eagles.

On the battlements of your brow song finds its daybreak. Poetic justice sets fire to fields of shame: no place for nostalgia, for I, the proper noun.

Every poem is made at the poet's expense.

Future noon, an immense tree of invisible leaves. In the streets, men and women singing the song of the sun, a fountain of transparencies. Yellow surf covers me: nothing of myself is to speak through my own mouth.

When History sleeps, it speaks in dreams: on the brow of the sleeping people, the poem is a constellation of blood. When History wakes, image becomes deed, the poem is achieved: poetry goes into action.

Deserve your dream.

~Octavio Paz
trans Muriel Rukeyser