By Octavio Paz
Roar of engines
swollen river
whiplashing whistles
squeal of breaks
babble
Flailing neon
knife wounds of electric light
Multicolored night
decked with signs
blinking letters
the leering wink of numbers
Night of countless tits
and a single bloody mouth
cats in heat monkeys panicked
Night in the bones
skeleton night
the headlights touch your secret plazas
the sanctuary of the body
the ark of the spirit
the lips of the wound
the wooded cleft of the oracles
City
heap of stones
in the sack of winter
Night grows
the tide grows
grim towers with fear at their throats
houses temples domes
petrified time
great masses of dream and pride
winter brands them with its cruel irons
stones chewed to the bone
by the century and its acids
the nameless evil
the evil with all the names
cyst
fixed
in the marrow of iron
in the blind joints of stone
City
a clock strikes
between your thighs
too late
too soon
Ages of smoke
battle in your skull
in your bed
the doomed centuries make love in sorrow
City of indestructible façade
crumbling memory
your demented speech
woven with reason
runs through my veins
your syllable ringing in my ears
your interminable phrase
As though suffering from loss of blood
the moon
rises over the rooftops
The moon
like a drunkard falls on its face
Stray dogs
pick the moon's bone clean
A convoy of trucks
runs over the bodies of the moon
A cat crosses the bridge of the moon
The butchers wash their hands
in the water of the moon
The city stretches out in its alleys
goes to sleep in the empty lots
the city has become lost in its outskirts
A clock strikes the time
now it's time
it's not time now
now it's now
now it's time to get rid of time
now it's not time
it's time and not now
time eats the now
Now it's time
windows close
walls close doors close
the words go home
now we are more alone
The mind and its octopus scribes
sit down at my table
the court condemns what I write
the court condemns what I keep silent
Footsteps of time that appears and says
what does it say?
what are you saying? my thoughts say
you don't know what you're saying
traps of reason
crimes of language
you must erase what you write
write what you erase
the front and back of arthritic Spanish
Today one could say all the words
a skyscraper of bristling words
an enormous meaningless city
a grandiose incoherent monument
a miniature babbling Babel
others built you
the masters
the venerable immortals
seated on their rickety thrones
others made you the language of man
gibberish
crumbling words
Go back to the names
the axis
the broad backs of this world
the shoulders effortlessly bearing time
Names
the glass frozen glance
the wall no one's mask
the books with blank expressions
swollen with warring reasons
the servile table set on all fours
the door the condemned door
Names
scuttled truths
Time is weightless
and heavy-hearted
Things are not in their places
they have no places
They are motionless
and moving
they spread wings
spread roots
claws and teeth
they have eyes and nails and nails and nails
They are real they are ghosts they are bodies
they're here
and can't be touched
The names are not names
they don't say what they say
I must say what they don't say
I must say what they say
stone blood sperm
rage city clock
panic laughter panic
I must say what they don't say
the promiscuity of the name
the nameless evil
the name of the evils
I must say what they say
the sanctuary of the body
the ark of the spirit
From 'Collected Poems: 1957-1987'
Translated by Eliot Weinberger
Read about Octavio Paz
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