Your hair compliments the wind
Your hair is the wind to me
Your hair tangles the Mexican sun
Tangles it with boulevards of red light
Your hair drives trees to the ground
Licks the delicious leaves
Your flowing hair has drifted away
It has become the rivers and fingers
Of the scorched land
I watch you smile as day begins
A smile that fills the spaces between
The trees in the dark green forest
A smile which snaps on the sea
The grass grows through you and
Pumps sleep into your breath
Breath that chases rocks down slopes
crashes them against the oceans
Your hair gathers the minutes and hours
Of the day in the farmers tired hands
And spreads them across the fields
You must feel alone sometimes
Your eyes look deep into the still waters.
Where have you gone now?
Lost in the red web your hair has spun
In the parade of clouds
Clouds that tip you up and trample
Your tears underfoot
The sun is here now chipped and sizzling
Clawed by stars that hide under its collar
The day becomes a kaleidoscopic circus
Talking of circuses I hear one when we
Laugh as we tumble together in lovemaking
In your eyes a white pony springs forward
And is set on fire by a burning hoop
Within me is love that bursts into flame as
I lock my fingers in your hair and eat your
beautiful goodnight kisses.
.
Malcolm Paul
Picture Nick Victor
* Octavia Paz
A prolific author and poet, Paz published scores of works during his lifetime, many of which have been translated into other languages. His poetry has been translated into English by Samuel Beckett, Charles Tomlinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Muriel Rukeyser and Mark Strand. His early poetry was influenced by Marxism, surrealism, and existentialism, as well as religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. His poem, “Piedra de sol” (“Sunstone”), written in 1957, was praised as a “magnificent” example of surrealist poetry in the presentation speech of his Nobel Prize.
His later poetry dealt with love and eroticism, the nature of time, and Buddhism. He also wrote poetry about his other passion, modern painting, dedicating poems to the work of Balthus, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Antoni Tàpies, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roberto Matta.
.