OCTAVIO PAZ modern haiku 36.1
January 21, 2012 § 2 Comments
A DAY IN THE CITY OF LAKES
:
:
The white palace
white on the black lake
lingam and yoni
:
As the goddess does the god
night has encircled me
:
The cool veranda
You are boundless, boundless
but surveyable
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The stars they’re inhuman
This hour though is ours
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Falling I rise
Burning I grow wet
Do you have only one body?
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Birds skimming the water
Dawn comes to my eyelids
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Filled with thoughts
immense as death itself
the marble looms over you
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Palaces run aground
their whiteness is adrift
:
Women and children
roam through the street
fruit scattered about
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Flashy rags or lightening?
A procession on the plain
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Cold and jingling
on their wrists and ankles
bands of silver
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In a rented suit a guy
goes to his wedding
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Clean and draped to dry
among the stones clothes
you watch in silence
:
On the island monkeys
with red asses are screaming
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Sun dim in the heat
Hanging from the wall
a wasp’s nest
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My face is also the sun
of blackened thoughts
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Flies and blood
fill the courtyard of Kali
A young goat flits about
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Eating from the same plate
gods and men and beasts
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Over the pale god
the black goddess
dances headless
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Heat and the hour splits open
These rotting mangoes
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Your face a lake
smooth, without thoughts
Out splashes a trout
:
Afternoon’s gone
Lights kindle over the water
:
A rippling in
the golden plain and a grotto
Your clothes nearby
:
Over your body in the shade
I am like a lamp
:
A scale made of
living bodies bound together
over the void
:
The water sustains us
The sky overwhelms us
:
I open my eyes
How many trees were born
just last night
:
What I’ve seen and wanted to say
the white sun blots out
:
:
El Dia en Udaipur translated by Chris Gordon
ant5 
In waves it comes, each glinting wave, rising, falling, breaking upon the next, the next, the next. I posted this at word pond today with many thank yous . . .
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