During my years as a
professor, I particularly appreciated the line
"The university is a muck full of frogs."
...
Images buried
in the eye of the dog of the dead
fallen
in the blind well of origins
whirlwinds of reflections
in the stone theater of memory
images
whirling in the circus of the empty eye
ideas
of red brown and green
swarms of flies
ideas ate the deities
the deities
became ideas
great bladders full of bile
the bladders burst
the idols exploded
putrefaction of deities
the sanctuary was a dungheap
the dungheap a nursery
armed ideas sprouted
ideolized ideodeities
sharpened syllogisms
cannibal deities
ideas idotic as deities
rabid dogs
dogs in love with their own vomit
We have dug up Rage
The amphitheatre of the genital sun is a dungheap
The fountain of lunar water is a dungheap
The lovers' park is a dungheap
The library is a nest of killer rats
The university is a muck full of frogs
The altar is Chanfalla's swindle
The eggheads are stained with ink
The doctors dispute in a den of thieves
The businessmen
with fast hands and slow thoughts
negotiate in the graveyard
The dialecticians exalt the subtlety of the rope
The casuists sprinkle thugs with holy water
nursing violence with dogmatic milk
The fixed idea gets drunk with its opposite
The juggling ideologist
sharpener of sophisms
in his house of truncated quotations and assignations
plots Edens for industrious eunuchs
forest of gallows paradise of cages
Stained images
spit on the origins
future jailers present leeches
affront the living body of time
We have dug up rage
On the chest of Mexico
tablets written by the sun
stairway of the centuries
spiral terrace of wind
the disinterred dance
anger panting thirst
the blind in combat beneath the noon sun
thirst panting anger
beating each other with rocks
the blind are beating each other
the men are crushing
the stones are crushing
within there is a water we drink
bitter water
water whetting thirst
Where is the other water?
Where is the other water? This is revealed in the final verse of Blanco, generally acknowledged as Paz's finest poem:
The spirit is an invention of the body The body is an invention of the world The world is an invention of the spirit No Yes the unreality of the seen tranparency is all that remains Your footsteps in the next room the green thunder ripening in the foliage of the sky You are naked like a syllable like a flame an island of flames the passion of compassionate coals the world a bundle of your images drowned in music Your body spilled on my body seen dissolved brings reality to seeing