sunstone, pg. 9
there is nothing inside me but a large wound,
a hollow place where no one goes,
a windowless present, a thought that returns
and repeats itself, reflects itself,
and loses itself in its own transparency,
a mind transfixed by an eye that watches
it watching itself till it drowns itself
in clarity:
I saw your horrid scales,
Melusina, shining green in the dawn,
you slept twisting between the sheets,
you woke shrieking like a bird,
and you fell and fell, till white and broken,
nothing remained of you but your scream,
and I find myself at the end of time
with bad eyes and a cough, rummaging through
the old photos:
there’s no one, you’re no one,
a heap of ashes and worn-out broom,
a rusted knife and a feather duster,
a pelt that hangs from a pack of bones,
a withered branch, a black hole,
and there at the bottom the eyes of a girl
drowned a thousand years ago,
glances buried deep in a well,
glances that have watched us since the beginning,
the girl’s glance of the aged mother
who sees her grown son a young father,
the mother’s glance of the lonely girl
who sees her father a young son,
glances that watch us from the depths
of life, and are the traps of death
-or what if that fall into those eyes
were the way back to true life?
-- Octavio Paz