After - Octavio Paz

[Larry Robinson]

After 

After chopping off all the arms 

that reached out to me; after 

boarding up all the windows 

and doors; after filling all the 

pits with poisoned water; after 

building my house on a rock of 

a no, inaccessible to flattery and 

fear; after cutting out my tongue 

and eating it; after hurling handfuls 

of silence and monosyllables of 

scorn at my loves; after forgetting my name 

and the name of my birth place 

and the name of my race; after 

judging and sentencing myself to 

perpetual waiting and perpetual 

loneliness, I heard against the 

stones of my dungeon of syllogisms 

the humid, tender, insistent 

onset of spring. 

	- Octavio Paz
	(translated by Robert Bly)