Octavio Paz: "Between Going and Staying"

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

"Between Going and Staying" by Octavio Paz, from The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987, translated by Eliot Weinberger. © New Directions Publishing, 1991.

Photography credit: "Shadows Low on the Office Wall," by Kevin J. Miyazaki (originally black and white).