Another one of my favorite Octavio Paz poems.  He has written such a huge amount of beautiful poetry.  This should be formatted differently… He scatters his lines in a way that I can’t recreate on here. Just another reason to buy this book.

My wife sleeps.
She too is a moon,
a clarity that travels
not between the reefs of the clouds,
but between the rocks and wracks of dreams:
She too is a soul.
She flows below her closed eyes,
a silent torrent
rushing down
from her forehead to her feet,
she tumbles within,
bursts out from within,
her heartbeats sculpt her,
traveling through herself
she invents herself,
inventing herself
she copies it,
she is an arm of the sea
between the islands of her breasts,
her belly a lagoon
where darkness and its foliage
grow pale,
she flows through her shape,
rises,
falls,
scatters in herself,
ties
herself to her flowing,
disperses in her form:
she too is a body.

Truth
is the swell of a breath
and the visions closed eyes see:
the palpable mystery of the person.

The night is at the point of running over.
It grows light.
The horizon has become aquatic.
To rush down from the heights of this hour:
Will dying be a falling or a rising,
a sensation or a cessation?

I close my eyes,
I hear in my skull
the footsteps of my blood,
I hear
time pass through my temples.
I am still alive.
The room is covered with moon.
Woman:
fountain in the night.
I am bound to her quiet flowing.