Octoavio Paz: Piedra nativa or Native Stone

As I mentioned in earlier posts about Joseph Wood Krutch's Baja California, along with Eliot Porter's photos and Joseph Wood Krutch's text, I found fragments of poetry by Octavio Paz.  This was my introduction to his poetry and on the back cover of the book was a marvelous photograph of an old door, a wall, and a chair, and the last stanza of this poem by Paz.

For some reason it has fascinated me over the decades, so I finally went searching and found a small collection of Paz's poetry translated by Muriel Rukeyser which included this poem, and best of all, both the Spanish poem and her translation. I actually prefer the sound of the Spanish version to the English, although her English translation resonates strongly with me also.


Piedra nativa

La luz devasta las alturas
Manadas de imperios en derrota 
El ojo retrocede cercado de reflejos
 
Paises vastos como el insomnio
Pedregales de hueso

Otono sin confines
Alza la sed sus invisibles surtidores
Un ultimo piru predica en el desierto

Cierro los ojos y oye cantar las luz:
El mediodia anida en tu timpano

Cierra los ojos y abrelos:
No hay nadie ni siquiera tu mismo
Lo que no es piedra es luz




Native Stone
Light is laying waste the heavens
Droves of dominions in stampede
The eye retreats surrounded by mirrors

Landscapes as enormous as insomnia
Stony ground of bone


Limitless autumn
Thirst lifts its invisible fountains
One last peppertree preaches in the desert

Close your eyes and hear the song of the light:
Noon takes shelter in your inner ear

Close your eyes and open them:
There is nobody not even yourself
Whatever is not stone is light

Octavio Paz
Selected Poems of  Octavio Paz
trans.  Muriel Rukeyser


These are the lines on the back cover of the book with a marvelous photograph of a stone? wall with a door flush in the wall and a chair beside it.  The brightness hurts the eyes.  After reading this brief concluding stanza, I had to search out Paz's poems, if only to read the complete poem.  


Cierra los ojos y abrelos:
No hay nadie ni siquiera tu mismo
Lo que no es piedra es luz


Close your eyes and open them:
There is nobody not even yourself
Whatever is not stone is light




What confuses me is that the title refers to stone, and while stone appears in the second and fifth stanzas, to me anyway, it seems as though the poem is mostly  about light.



Perhaps it is best just to read and not try to intellectualize here. Maybe Archibald MacLeish's plea "A poem should not mean/ But be" is most appropriate.



Is this a coherent unified poem, or several haiku-like poems?  A number of Paz's poems can be seen as haiku, and he has read haiku by Basho.  See the link to a commentary about Paz and a poem he wrote, "An Basho."


http://tinyurl.com/pwprmfn