Books Of No Hours, Liberty's Books

(I recognize you in the wine, in the stone :

I read with you elementary oracles – at the Havre-Caumartin

    Station, for example

someone has written, in black pencil, in capitals :

          ON T’OBLIGE PAS [A] TE LE LIRE : )

Together we read (fourmis perdues) the scraps

and stones of the city to discover there

The subdued color of a bombardment of flowers

Books of ivy crossed by a rapid white

which flares over the quiet of the palisades

Books of ivy, books of no hours, liberty’s books :

each page a day, each day the marvel

of being wine and stone, air, water, utterance,

flutter of eyelids :

From Renga, A Chain of Poems by Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud, Eduardo Sanguinetti, Charles Tomlinson (translations by Charles Tomlinson).  New York, George Braziller, 1971.