Octavio Paz Poems
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Octavio Paz Poems (Amazing Poems from a Legendary Poet)

Which of the Octavio Paz Poems have you read? In 1914, Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City. His grandfather, (on his father’s side), was a prominent liberal intellectual and one of the first authors to write a novel with an expressly Indian theme.

Octavio Paz Poems

Octavio Paz Poems

Enjoy this collection of poems which has translated Indian from to English

Across

I turn the page of the day,
writing what I’m told
by the motion of your eyelashes.

I enter you,
the truthfulness of the dark.
I want proofs of darkness, want
to drink the black wine:
take my eyes and crush them.

A drop of night
on your breast’s tip:
mysteries of the carnation.

Closing my eyes
I open them inside your eyes.

Always awake
on its garnet bed:
your wet tongue.

There are fountains
in the garden of your veins.

With a mask of blood
I cross your thoughts blankly:
amnesia guides me
to the other side of life.

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No More Clichés (Octavio Paz Poems)

Beautiful face
That like a daisy opens its petals to the sun
So do you
Open your face to me as I turn the page.

Enchanting smile
Any man would be under your spell,
Oh, beauty of a magazine.

How many poems have been written to you?
How many Dantes have written to you, Beatrice?
To your obsessive illusion
To you manufacture fantasy.

But today I won’t make one more Cliché
And write this poem to you.
No, no more clichés.

This poem is dedicated to those women
Whose beauty is in their charm,
In their intelligence,
In their character,
Not on their fabricated looks.

This poem is to you women,
That like a Shahrazade wake up
Everyday with a new story to tell,
A story that sings for change
That hopes for battles:
Battles for the love of the united flesh
Battles for passions aroused by a new day
Battle for the neglected rights
Or just battles to survive one more night.

Yes, to you women in a world of pain
To you, bright star in this ever-spending universe
To you, fighter of a thousand-and-one fights
To you, friend of my heart.

From now on, my head won’t look down to a magazine
Rather, it will contemplate the night
And its bright stars,
And so, no more clichés.

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Summit and Gravity (Octavio Paz Poems)

There’s a motionless tree

And another one coming forward

A river of trees

Hits my chest

The green surge

Is good fortune

You are dressed in red

You are

The seal of the scorched year

The carnal firebrand

The star fruit

In you like sun

The hour rests

Above an abyss of clarities

The height is clouded by birds

Their beaks construct the night

Their wings carry the day

Planted in the crest of light

Between firmness and vertigo

You are

Transparent balance

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Proem (Octavio Paz Poems)

   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 dissipa-

tion 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.

As One Listens To the Rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,

not attentive, not distracted,

light footsteps, thin drizzle,

water that is air, air that is time,

the day is still leaving,

the night has yet to arrive,

figurations of mist

at the turn of the corner,

figurations of time

at the bend in this pause,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

without listening, hear what I say

with eyes open inward, asleep

with all five senses awake,

it’s raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,

air and water, words with no weight:

what we are and are,

the days and years, this moment,

weightless time and heavy sorrow,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

wet asphalt is shining,

steam rises and walks away,

night unfolds and looks at me,

you are you and your body of steam,

you and your face of night,

you and your hair, unhurried lightning,

you cross the street and enter my forehead,

footsteps of water across my eyes,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the asphalt’s shining, you cross the street,

it is the mist, wandering in the night,

it is the night, asleep in your bed,

it is the surge of waves in your breath,

your fingers of water dampen my forehead,

your fingers of flame burn my eyes,

your fingers of air open eyelids of time,

a spring of visions and resurrections,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the years go by, the moments return,

do you hear the footsteps in the next room?

not here, not there: you hear them

in another time that is now,

listen to the footsteps of time,

inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,

listen to the rain running over the terrace,

the night is now more night in the grove,

lightning has nestled among the leaves,

a restless garden adrift-go in,

your shadow covers this page.

The Cervantes Award, the Neustadt Prize, and the Nobel Prize for Literature were given to Paz in 1981, 1982, and 1990, respectively. Paz passed on in 1998.

His poems were very influential and translated into so many other languages. You can also help our community grow by sharing our work to a larger space.

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