I talk about the city

by Octavio Paz
A Eliot Weinberger
today's novelty and tomorrow's ruin, buried and resurrected every day,
living together in streets, squares, buses, taxis, cinemas, theaters, bars, hotels, dove houses,
catacombs
the enormous city that fits in a three square meter room endless like a
galaxy
the city that dreams us all and that we all create and destroy and recreate
while we dream,
the city that we all dream of and that changes incessantly while we dream it,

the city that wakes every hundred years and sows itself in the mirror of a word and does not
he recognizes and once again falls asleep,

the city that blooms from the eyelids of the woman who sleeps beside me and becomes,
with its monuments and its statues, its stories and its legends,
in a spring made of many eyes and each eye reflects the same frozen landscape,
before schools and prisons, the alphabet and numbers, the altar and the law:
the river that is four rivers, the garden, the tree, the Woman and the Man dressed in wind

to return, to return, to be clay again, to bathe in that light, to sleep under those lights,

to float on the waters of time like the shimmering leaf of the maple that the current drags,
return, are we asleep or awake?, we are, nothing more we are, dawn, it is
early
we are in the city, we cannot leave it without falling into another, identical at least
distinct
I speak of the immense city, daily reality made of other people's words: the others,

and in each of them there is a severed self of a us, a self adrift,

I speak of the city built by the dead, inhabited by their stubborn ghosts, ruled
for his despotic memory,
the city I talk to when I don't talk to anyone and that now dictates these words to me
sleepless,
I speak of towers, bridges, subways, hangars, wonders and disasters,
 The abstract state and its concrete policemen, its pedagogues, its jailers, its
preachers,
the stores where there is everything and we spend everything and everything becomes smoke,

the markets and their fruit pyramids, the rotation of the four seasons, the cattle in
canal hanging from the hooks, the hills of spices and the towers of jars and preserves,
all the flavors and colors, all the smells and all the materials, the tide of the
voices water, metal, wood, clay, the hustle, the bargaining and the haggling from the beginning of
the days,
I speak of the stone and marble buildings, of cement, glass, iron, of the crowd in
the lobbies and portals, of the elevators that go up and down like mercury in the
thermometers
of banks and their management boards, of factories and their managers, of
the workers and their incestuous machines,

I speak of the immemorial parade of prostitution through long streets like desire and like
boredom
of the coming and going of cars, a mirror of our efforts, tasks, and passions (why,
for what, towards where?)
from the always crowded hospitals where we always die alone,
I speak of the dim light of certain churches and of the flickering flames of the candles in the
altars
timid tongues with which the forsaken speak to the saints and to the virgins
in a fiery and stuttered language,
I talk about dinner under the one-eyed light at the table with the chipped plates,
of the innocent tribes that camp in the wastelands with their women and their children, their
animals and their specters,

of the rats in the sewer and of the brave sparrows that nest in the wires, in the
cornices and on the martyrized trees,
of contemplative cats and their libertine novels in the moonlight, cruel goddess of
the rooftops
of the stray dogs, who are our Franciscans and our bhikkus, the dogs
that they unearth the bones of the sun,

I speak of the hermit and of the fraternity of the libertarians, of the conspiracy of the justifiers and
from the band of thieves,
of the conspiracy of equals and of the society of friends of Crime, of the club of the
suicides and Jack the Ripper,
of the Friend of Men, sharpener of the guillotine, and of Caesar, Delight of the Gender
Human,
 I speak of the paralytic neighborhood, the blistered wall, the dry fountain, the graffiti-covered statue,

I speak of garbage heaps the size of a mountain and of the taciturn sun that filters in the
pulumo,
of broken glass and the desert of scrap, of last night's crime and the feast of
immortal Trimalchio,
from the moon between the television antennas and a butterfly on a boat of
filth,
I speak of dawns like the flight of herons in the lagoon and of the sun with transparent wings.
that rests on the stone leaves of the churches and on the chirping of the light in the stems of
glass of the palaces,
I speak of some sunsets at the beginning of autumn, cascades of incorporeal gold,
transfiguration of this world, everything loses form, everything remains suspended,

the light thinks and each one of us feels thought by that reflective light, for a
long moment the time dissipates, we are air again,
I speak of summer and of the tranquil night that grows on the horizon like a mountain of
smoke that little by little crumbles and falls over us like a wave,
reconciliation of the elements, the night has stretched out and her body is a powerful river of
soon asleep, we fall asleep in the waves of his breath, the hour is palpable,
we can touch like a fruit,
they have turned on the lights, the avenues burn with the glow of desire, in the parks the light
Electrical energy passes through the foliage and a green and phosphorescent drizzle falls on us.
which lights us up without getting us wet, the trees whisper, they tell us something,

there are streets in twilight that are a smiling hint, we do not know where they lead, such
through the embankment of the lost islands,

I speak of the stars over the high terraces and of the indecipherable phrases they write.
in the stone of the sky,
I speak of the quick downpour that lashes the windows and humbles the trees, it lasted twenty-five
minutes and now up there there are blue holes and beams of light, the steam rises from the asphalt,
the cars shine, there are puddles where boats of reflections sail,
I talk about nomadic clouds and a slender musician who lights up a room in a
fifth floor and a sound of laughter in the middle of the night like distant water flowing
roots and herbs,
I speak of the anticipated encounter with that unexpected shape in which the unknown embodies.
and is manifested to each one:

eyes that are the night that opens and the day that awakens, the sea that stretches and the
talking llama, brave breasts: lunar tide,
lips that say sesame and the time will open and the small room becomes a garden of
metamorphosis and the air and the fire intertwine, the earth and the water are blurred,
 or it is the advent of the moment when over there, in that other side that is right here, the
the key closes and time ceases to flow;
moment of here, end of the hiccup, of the groan and of the longing, the soul loses body and is
falls through a hole in the floor, collapses into itself, time has collapsed,
we walk through an endless corridor, we gasp in a sandy area,

Does that music move away or come closer, do those pale lights turn on or off?, sings the
space, time dissipates: it is the fogging, it is the gaze that slips over the smooth wall, it is the
the wall that silences, the wall,

I speak of our public history and our secret history, yours and mine,
I speak of the stone jungle, the desert of the prophet, the anthill of souls, the
congregation of tribes, the house of mirrors, the labyrinth of echoes,
I speak of the great rumor that comes from the depths of time, an incoherent murmur of
nations that come together or disperse, rolling of crowds and their weapons like rocks that
they break, the deaf sound of bones falling into the pit of history,
I speak of the city, shepherd of centuries, mother that does not give birth to us and devours us, invents us and
he forgets us.

LETTER OF BELIEF