Each night is an eyelid, the thorns never stop piercing. And the day never ends, never stops counting itself, broken into copper coins. I am tired of so many stone beads scattered in the dust. I am tired of this unfinished solitaire. Lucky the mother scorpion who devours her young. Lucky the spider. Lucky the snake that sheds its skin. Lucky the water that drinks itself. When will these images stop devouring me? When will I stop falling in those empty eyes?
I am alone and fallen, grain of corn pulled from the ear of time. Sow me among the battle dead. I will be born in the captain's eye. Rain down on me, give me sun. My body, plowed by your body, will turn into a field where one is sown and a hundred reaped. Wait for me on the other side of the year: you will meet me like a lightning flash stretched to the edge of autumn. Touch my grass breasts. Kiss my belly, sacrificial stone. In my navel the whirlwind grows calm: I am the fixed center that moves the dance. Burn, fall into me: I am the pit of living lime that cures the bones of their afflictions. Die in my lips. Rise from my eyes. Images gush from my body: drink in these waters and remember what you forgot at birth. I am the wound that does not heal, the small solar stone: if you strike me the world will go up in flames.
Take my necklace of tears. I wait for you on this side of time where light has inaugurated a joyous rein: the covenant of the enemy twins, water, that escapes between our fingers, and ice, petrified like a king in his pride. There you will open my body to read the inscription of your fate.
-- Obsidian Butterfly, Octavio Paz.
