In the darkness defined by her light i see the silhouette of another woman.
Her skin as black as the darkness between stars.
The recent moon is her hairpiece.
She is distant, inscrutable, and cold.
Now dormant.
But only for a time.
Is this how seasons work?
The bright woman looks at me.
Which, when she sleeps, seems the carved face of an angel.
Her hair a harp, the hand of a breeze follows
And plays, against the white cloud of the pillows.
Then, in a flush of rose, she woke and her eyes that opened
Swam in blue through her rose flesh that dawned.
From her dew of lips, the drop of one word
Fell like the first of fountains: murmured
'Darling', upon my ears the song of the first bird.
'My dream becomes my dream,' she said, 'come true.
I waken from you to my dream of you.'
Oh, my own wakened dream then dared assume
The audacity of her sleep. Our dreams
Poured into each other's arms, like streams.
—"Daybreak",
Stephen Spender
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapor? –
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapor,
To lust of His mind –
Thou could'st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.
—"To a Snowflake",
Francis Thompson
La mirada interior se despliega y un mundo de vértigo y llama nace bajo la frente del que sueña:
soles azules, verdes remolinos, picos de luz que abren astros como granadas,
tornasol solitario, ojo de oro girando en el centro de una explanada calcinada,
bosques de cristal de sonido, bosques de ecos y respuestas y ondas, diálogo de transparencias,
¡viento, galope de agua entre los muros interminables de una garganta de azabache,
caballo, cometa, cohete que se clava justo en el corazón de la noche, plumas. surtidores,
plumas, súbito florecer de las antorchas, velas, alas, invasión de lo blanco,
pájaros de las islas cantando bajo la frente del que sueña!
Abri los ojos, los alcé hasta el cielo y vi cómo la noche se cubría de estrellas.
¡Islas vivas, brazaletes de islas llameantes, piedras ardiendo, respirando, racimos de piedras vivas.
cuánta fuente, qué claridades, qué cabelleras sobre una espalda oscura,
cuanto río allá arriba, y ese sona remoto del agua junto al fuego, de luz contra la sombra!
Harpas, jardines de harpas…
—"El cántaro roto" (selections),
Octavio Paz
night with eyes of water in the field asleep
is in your eyes, a horse that trembles,
is in your eyes of a secret water.
Eyes of shadow-water,
eyes of well-water,
eyes of dream-water.
Silence and solitude,
two little animals moon-led,
drink in your eyes,
drink in those waters.
If you open your eyes,
night opens, doors of musk,
the secret kingdom of the water opens
flowing from the center of night.
And if you close your eyes,
a river fills you from within,
flows forward, darkens you:
night brings its wetness to beaches in your soul.
—"Agua Nocturna (Water Night)",
Octavio Paz (translation: Muriel Rukeyser)
Spring up, O well!—sing to it!—
the well that the princes made,
that the nobles of the people dug,
with the sceptre and with their staffs.
—Book of Numbers, 21:17-18