Octavio Paz, b. 100 Years ago today…

… on March 31, & left eso mundo in April 1998. A day, thus, on which to take time to reread a few of Paz’s poems in Eliot Weinberger’s excellent translations, & probably an essay or so. On the day of his passing I was in Berkeley & wrote the following poem, in memoriam:

6:30 am on terrace of the French Hotel in
Berkeley, reading the New York Times
obituary for Octavio Paz while

across the street just
to the right of Chez Panisse
a pale watery sun

sits locked in-
to the criss-cross webbing
of a tall dark fir —

as if his going had
for a moment stopped
Sol in it’s tracks —

the world a bit colder
after the heat of Paz,
a bit older, less bold,

his ashes raining
now over
Mexican earth.

A light wind shifts
twigs, the sun it
seems to

move in-
crementally higher —
it all does go on

while you now sit with Benito
Juarez & Pancho Villa
& introduce them

to some yankee poetas
Blackburn, say, and Olson still
mumbling “the wheels of the sun

must be unstuck”
& you argue for a
revolution

of the imagination &
we say, Octavio,
gracias for

releasing that sun!

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