x "The butterfly never wondered:
it flew."
— Octavio Paz, from “Example”, in A Tree Within, trans. Eliot Weinberger, posted on the-final-sentence

Between what I see and what I say …
for Roman Jakobsen

1
Between what I see and what I say,
between what I say and what I keep silent,
between what I keep silent and what I dream,
between what I dream and what I forget:
poetry.
It slips
between yes and no,
says
what I keep silent
what I say,
dreams
what I forget.
It is not speech:
it is an act
of speech.
Poetry
speaks and listens:
it is real.
As soon as I say
it is real,
it vanishes.
Is it then more real?

2
Tangible idea,
intangible
word:
poetry
comes and goes
between what is
and what is not.
It weaves
and unweaves reflections.
Poetry
scatters eyes on a page,
scatters words on our eyes.
Eyes speak,
words look,
looks think.
To hear
thoughts,
see
what we say,
touch
the body of an idea.
Eyes close,
the words open.

— Octavio Paz, in A Tree Within, translated by E. Weinberger

x "I walk without moving forward
We never arrive
Never reach where we are
Not the past
the present is untouchable"
— Octavio Paz, last lines from “Return”, in Selected Poems, translated by E. Weinberger

x "Between what I see and what I say,
between what I say and what I keep silent,
between what I keep silent and what I dream,
between what I dream and what I forget:
poetry."
— Octavio Paz, from “[Between what I see and what I say]”, found in A Tree Within, translated by Eliot Weinberger, with thanks to litverve

x "… I look out through my own unrealities
the same day is beginning
Space wheels
the body wrenches up its roots
Our bodies
stretched out
weigh no more than dawn"
— Octavio Paz, from “Wind from all compass points”, translated by Paul Blackburn

x "I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out."
— “Homage to Claudio Ptolemy” by Octavio Paz, translated by E. Weinberger

x "At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and the vertigo of death;
the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena in submarine gardens;
the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments;
the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page;
the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses,
for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-sorrow desert;
the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipation of the self;
the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors; the recollection of pronouns
freshly cut in the garden of Epicurus, and the garden of Netzahualcoyotl;
the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the cave of
thought;
the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;
the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language;
the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in love.

Syllables seeds."
— Proem by Octavio Paz, translated by Elliot Weinberger

x "There is light. We neither see or touch it.
In its empty clarities rests
what we touch and see.
I see with my fingertips
what my eyes touch:
shadows, the world.
With shadows I draw worlds,
I scatter worlds with shadows.
I hear the light beat on the other side."
— This Side by Octavio Paz, translated by Eliot Weinberger, in Selected Poems