"Obra Poética (1935-1988) de Octavio Paz", edited by Seix Barral. Pg. 11:
Los poemas son objetos verbales inacabados e inacabables. No existe lo que se llama versión definitiva: cada poema es el borrador de otro, que nunca escribiremos...
All poems are unfinished and unfinishable verbal objects. There is no such thing as the definitive version: every poem is the draft of another, which we'll never write...
Destino del Poeta
¿Palabras? Sí, de aire,
y en el aire perdidas.Déjame que me pierda entre palabras,
déjame ser el aire en unos labios,
un soplo vagabundo sin contornos
que el aire desvanece.También la luz en sí misma se pierde.
Poet's Destingy
Words? Yes, of air,
and lost in the air.Let me lose myself between words,
let me be the air in a pair of lips,
a stray breeze without borders
which the air fades away.Light can also lose itself in itself.
Oh, Tavito, please guide my fingertips in these auspicious of times in which inspiration is a luxury. Please whisper the words that will create this mocking white into the orgy of blackness I long for. Stroke the back of my head oh so gently when I'm presuming of logic that oozes from this useless ink, when it is beauty that should ultimately stand anywhere a mind tries in mumbles to describe itself. Pat my back when the sentence here is undone, undoable, but, nonetheless, beautiful...
Dr. Paz...
I know you're here, somewhere. I know I haven't written to you, but you haven't either. We're both here: point me to where I left it back then, you know I'll keept it right, you know I'll bring it unsane. I'm not asking for a complete work, just a word, a letter, a dot of ink... the start of it all, the prelude to the waterfall of soft feathers that mask and reveal my children to those unfilled, unsatisfiable glasses. You're here and I can't hear you, can't feel you: alone as I suspect, as I've been always in this type of venture, in this my only true endeavor.
Fine, I'll ablige... I'll spread my hand like a caricature trying to simulate wisdom, and act as the gardener in a forest of weeds, trying to find the rose inside it. It works, and only seemingly when you stay mute; I know what you're doing, but I'll ablige. Trying to guide me by indifference like a youth playing poet: complimentary in a way, insulting in another... I deserve both, so I'll ablige.
Now you know: if it's undone, you're to blame.
La sabiduria no radica en la fijacion ni en el cambio, pero en la dialectica entre los dos.
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.
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