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.

The Given Is Ground (From Renga)

The given is ground.  You are bound by it

as the eyes are bound – by a frame of nearnesses

surrounding things half-seen  :  thick, bare

calligraphy and confusion of boughs on air :

 

It is given, the confusion of the trees

of infinitesimal particles of dust

flies on the grain of paper, grasses

mouths     blank in the ground of sight :

Confused, you come back, confusion diffused,

uncertain insect,

scabies for each of my eyelids, sword for the iris, bare

scene : your navel is the eye of my tree, wide

landscape of chains, of whips, hypodermic for my vein :

ground, trees, thickets, navel, fixed ray

(Ares and Eros) : the writing breathes – nuptial sea.

 

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

LOVE THEY KEPT CRYING (RENGA)

Love they kept crying love swiftness

already at rest     love the unmoving

in full flight --- the gravity of speed:

Half of the water grew dark     half

of the air     a black round entered the water

and night was half a lake:

And love, a command no more, to each one

the way lies clear through the comity of vine, of stone:

(through places that are years, before lit-up show windows

which are dialogues split-off from montage:  you return, once

     more, by the rue du

Dragon, you come down your stairs: )

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

Top illustration:  Dora Maar, The Pretender, Photo-collage, 1936.

Bottom illustration: Eugene Atget, Staircase, ca. 1900-1910.