Octavio Paz, "Clear Night"

[the-grynne.livejournal.com]

from CLEAR NIGHT

The city unfolds
its face is the face of my love
its legs are the legs of a woman
Towers plazas columns bridges streets
river belt of drowned landscapes
City or Woman Presence
fan that reveals or conceals life
beautiful as the uprising of the poor
your face is delirious but I drink sanity in your eyes
your armpits are night but your breasts are day
your words are stone by your tongue is rain
your back is noon on the sea
your laughter is the sun buried in the suburbs
your hair unpinned is a storm on the terraces of dawn
your belly is the breath of the sea and the pulse of day
your name is downpour and your name is meadow
your name is high tide
you have all the names of water
But your sex is unnameable
the other face of being
the other face of time
the reverse of life
Here every speech ends
here beauty is illegible
here presence becomes awesome
folded into itself Presence is empty
the visible is invisible
Here the invisible becomes visible
here the star is black
light is shadow and shadow light
Here time stops
the four points of the compass meet
it is the lonely place and the meeting place

City Woman Presence
time ends here
here it begins


OCTAVIO PAZ

Translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger