Beyond Love
 
            by Octavio Paz - late 1930's (?)
 
            Everything threatens us:
            time, that in living fragments severs
            what I have been
            from what I will become,
            as the machete splits the snake;
            awareness, transparency pierced through,
            the look blinded by seeing itself looking;
            words, grey gloves, mental dust on the grass,
            water, skin;
            our names, risen up between yourself and me,
            walls of emptiness no trumpet can shout down.
                                                                                   
            Not dream, peopled with broken images,
            nor delirium and its prophetic foam,
            no, nor love with its teeth and claws, are enough.