(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.
