Repurposed Paz: Part V.

Every night she goes to the well
a woman whose movements are a river's

Light loses itself between her legs
in the night of the flesh

And light is naked and sees itself in water
and light standing naked in the river

A man goes down to the river
penetrates the sleeping body of water

Petrified waters
and water is laid bare and naked leaps

-ES

Repurposed Paz: Part IV.

Bodies of lime and plaster,
people of dust and light,
bodies that make their way through other bodies

with the breathing of distant water
are at times two waves,
from desire to act.

Waves of blindness,
waves of shadows in the night;
the sea fighting far off with its swords and feathers.

Up there the moon alone
and wine of purple lips.
This shore if made of lips, made of dreams.

-ES

Repurposed Paz: Part III.

If you open your eyes,
eyes of dream-water,
one dreaming woman gives us the form of love forever.
There is nothing in the world but two beings naked embraced.
They meet and are found in your eyes.

-ES

Repurposed Paz: Part II.

Gardens of water flowers, of water, precious stones of water,
And among them all the girl who comes forward dividing the deep water.
All disappear before this simple flower,
the human flower;
the body that opens.
The night opens doors of musk.
It is the eating of forbidden fruit,
when the world begins to open its doors and the angel nods consent at the gate of the garden.

-ES

Repurposed Paz: Part I.

A girl made of water.
Nobody knows her name or why she has come here.
She closes her eyes and within her own self
flows forward, darkens you.
A river fills you from within.
Drink in those waters.
Close your eyes and open them.
Eyes of shadow-water:
a little water where the eyes may drink,
flowing from the center of the night.
Night brings its wetness to beaches in your soul.
You too belong to the night.

-ES

In Pursuit of Octavio Paz (via Eric Whitacre)

Unanticipated stirrings. Notable absence of antipathy. Immediate awareness of epochal shift. All those greeted me as I sat in the bleachers at Memorial Auditorium during an official visit to the campus of Concordia College in Moorhead sometime in early 1999. 

My inculcated loathing of all things a cappella evaporated swiftly and almost painfully while I listened to Rene Clausen conduct Eric Whitacre's arresting setting of Octavio Paz's poem "Water Night". Before the Choir completed its lush enunciation of the word "night", there was no choice apart from full acknowledgement of my unexpected ardor towards the immersive soundscape. I reluctantly conceded the need to jettison my formerly held views related to the hierarchy of artistic and even existential merit, whereby all instrumental music was somehow intrinsically superior to its vocal counterpart. As I surrendered that sense of rightful indignation, my thoughts panned to C.S. Lewis and his bus: we were two portraits of miserable, disinclined converts. The urge to mourn my emergent status as a newly-minted lover of choral music was strong. Thankfully, the tide of finely-tuned voices rapidly washed away such mental detritus. 

And so it was that my introduction to poetry of Octavio Paz, the music of Eric Whitacre, and the very notion of a pleasurable listening experience derived from choral music occurred simultaneously. 

Upon further investigation, Paz's poetry contains a rich music of its own. Reading his early work, I was struck by the recurrence of certain words and images: woman, water, light, eyes, stone, man, to name a few. Seemingly unseen connections between different poems appeared as I read, and the music of reiterated words combined to form an unorganized sestina-esque quality in my mind. 

I felt compelled to harvest that hidden abundance, taking care not to disturb the foremost fruit too greatly. The form of a cento—a work comprised of quotations from other, pre-existing works (or more specifically in this case, a poem comprised entirely of whole lines of pre-existing poetry)—proved suitable to my task, and what will follow are a few of the pieces hewn from lines of Paz's poems.