Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano; March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. He is considered by many as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets of all time...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 March 1914
CityMexico City, Mexico
CountryMexico
mother school reality
The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.
speak translate
When we learn to speak, we learn to translate.
dark wind tree
Enormous and solid but swaying, beaten by the wind but chained, murmur of a million leaves against my window. Riot of trees, surge of dark green sounds. The grove, suddenly still, is a web of fronds and branches.
wall light rocks
With great difficulty advancing by millimeters each year, I carve a road out of the rock. For millenniums my teeth have wasted and my nails broken to get there, to the other side, to the light and the open air. And now that my hands bleed and my teeth tremble, unsure in a cavity cracked by thirst and dust, I pause and contemplate my work. I have spent the second part of my life breaking the stones, drilling the walls, smashing the doors, removing the obstacles I placed between the light and myself in the first part of my life.
running rain night
listen to me as one listens to the rain, the years go by, the moments return, do you hear the footsteps in the next room? not here, not there: you hear them in another time that is now, listen to the footsteps of time, inventor of places with no weight, nowhere, listen to the rain running over the terrace, the night is now more night in the grove, lightning has nestled among the leaves, a restless garden adrift-go in, your shadow covers this page.
resurrection poetry-is
Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.
thinking light
Light is time thinking about itself.
men language disappear
For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears.
art yawning abyss
Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
thank-you gratitude water
If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: gratitude, acknowledgement.
body fields hundred
My body, plowed by your body, will turn into a field where one is sown and a hundred reaped.
wall discovery self
Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall-that of our consciousness-between the world and ourselves.
time bits dies
We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit.
revolution delight quick-death
It is the Revolution, the magical word, the word that is going to change everything, that is going to bring us immense delight and a quick death.