Octavio Paz he died a day like today of 1998 en Coyoacan, Mexico, his native country. One of the most famous and recognized Latin American poets, it was also a great essayist. They granted him the Nobel Prize for Literature en 1990. In his memory I recover 6 of the poems of his extensive and very varied work that make up numerous collections of poems and essay books.
Octavio Paz
In the early 30 years published his first poems in the magazine Railing. And later he will also direct some like Workshop o Prodigal son, already in the 40's. Visiting Spain, he dealt with republican intellectuals and with Pablo Neruda, which were great influences on his work. It is in the decade of the 50 when he publishes 4 titles important: Parole, The Labyrinth of Solitude, Eagle or sun?, and The bow and the lyre. And among his essay books it is worth highlighting, to give some examples, Quadrivium, Toponemes, Passed in clear o The double flame. In 1981 received the Cervantes Prize.
6 poems
Sonnet III
Of the green joy of the sky
lights you recover that the moon loses
because the light of itself remember
lightning and autumns in your hair.
The wind drinks wind in its stir,
move the leaves and their green rain
wet your shoulders, your back bites
and it undresses you and burns and returns yelo.
Two ships with unfolded sails
your two breasts. Your back is a torrent.
Your belly is a petrified garden.
It is autumn on your neck: sun and mist.
Beneath the green adolescent sky
your body gives its love sum.
***
Between going and staying
Between leaving and staying doubt the day,
in love with its transparency.
The circular afternoon is already bay:
in its still movement the world rocks.
Everything is visible and everything is elusive,
everything is close and everything is untouchable.
The papers, the book, the glass, the pencil
they rest in the shadow of their names.
Beat of time that repeats in my temple
the same stubborn syllable of blood.
The light makes the wall indifferent
a spectral theater of reflections.
In the center of an eye I discover myself;
He doesn't look at me, I look at me in his eyes.
The instant dissipates. Without moving,
I stay and I go: I am a pause.
***
Your eyes
Your eyes are the homeland
of the lightning and the tear,
speaking silence,
storms without wind,
sea without waves, birds imprisoned,
dormant golden beasts,
wicked topaz as the truth,
autumn in a forest glade
where the light sings on the shoulder
of a tree and all the leaves are birds,
beach that morning
find constellated eyes,
basket of fire fruits,
lie that feeds,
mirrors of this world,
doors of the beyond,
calm pulsation of the sea at noon,
absolute blinking, wasteland.
***
Scribble
With a lump of coal
with my broken chalk and my red pencil
draw your name
the name of your mouth
the sign of your legs
on nobody's wall
At the forbidden door
engrave the name of your body
until my razor blade
blood
and the stone scream
and the wall breathes like a chest
***
Silence
As well as the background of the music
a note sprouts
that while it vibrates it grows and thins
until in other music it falls silent,
springs from the bottom of silence
another silence, sharp tower, sword,
and rises and grows and suspends us
and while it rises they fall
memories, hopes,
the little lies and the big ones,
and we want to scream and in the throat
the cry fades:
we flow into silence
where silences are mute.
***
Two bodies
Two bodies face to face
sometimes it's two waves
and the night is ocean.
Two bodies face to face
sometimes two stones
and the desert night.
Two bodies face to face
they are sometimes roots
at night linked.
Two bodies face to face
they are sometimes razors
and the lightning night.
Two bodies face to face
they are two stars that fall
In an empty sky