The bird (Octavio Paz)

This one really gets me going.  La luz! La luz!

The Bird

In transparent silence

day was resting:

the transparency of space

was silence’s transparency.

Motionless light of the sky was soothing

the growth of the grass.

Small things of earth, among the stones,

under identical light, were stones

Time sated itself in the minute.

And in an absorbed stillness

noonday consumed itself.

And a bird sang, slender arrow.

The sky shivered a wounded silver breast,

the leaves moved,

and grass awoke.

And I knew that death was an arrow

let fly from an unknown hand

and in the flicker of an eye we die.


from Bajo Tu Clara Sombra/"Under Your Clear Shadow"
1935-1944