José Emilio Pacheco

The Eternal Sea

Like sky let's say it has no origin
Wherever you find it first the sea begins
and going out it meets you everywhere

High treason

I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history
mountains
(and three or four rivers).
E. Bostelman

The elements of the night

Beneath this small, dry empire summer has whittled down,
faith lies toppled—all those tall, farsighted days.
In the last valley
destructiveness is glutted
on conquered cities, affronted by the ash.

Rain extinguishes
the woodland lit by lightning.
Night passes on its venom
Words crack against the air.

Nothing is restored, nothing gives back
that glowing green to the scorched fields.

Neither will the water, in its exile
from the fountain, succeed its own sweet
rise, nor the bones of the eagle fly
through its wings again.


Gift of Heraclitus

But water spreads down the windows
like moss:
it doesn't know that everything
is altered once it leaves the dream.

And the fire's repose means assuming a form
out of its full powers of transformation.
Fire of the air, the fire's solitude,
igniting the air made of fire.
Fire is the world that goes out and burns
again to last (it was always so) forever.

What is scattered today comes together,
what is near goes away:
it was and it wasn't me who waited for you
one morning at the deserted park;
I stood by the everchanging river
as it was entered (it will never happen again)
by October's sunlight, filtered
in shattered pieces through the thicket.
There was a smell of ocean: a dove
caught fire in the air like an arch of salt.
You weren't there, you won't be,
but the waves from a distant foam
came together in my deeds and words
(never belonging to others, never mine):
the sea which is pure water to the fish
will never quench the thirst of men.

About the author