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.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theater of reflections.

The moment scatters. Motionless,

I stay and go: I am a pause.

         (Translated by Eliot Weinberg)

Poem by Octavio Paz