After
after chopping off all the arms that reached out to me;
after boarding up all the windows and doors;
after filling all the pits with poisoned water;
after building my house on the rock of no,
inaccessible to flattery and fear;
after cutting off my tongue and eating it;
after hurling handfuls of silence
and monosyllable of scorn at my loves;
after forgetting my name;
and the name of my birthplace;
and the name of my race;
after judging and sentencing myself
to perpetual waiting,
and perpetual loneliness, I heard
against the stones of my dungeon of syllogisms,
the humid, tender, insistent
onset of spring.
~ Octavio Paz ~
The imagery in this poem feels guttural, and the violence highlights the lengths we will go to in isolating ourselves. What comes up for you when you read this poem, which was written as a private expression of a man’s realizations? Where do you keep yourself separate? What toxic pools do you swim in that poison you? Where do you barricade yourself?
The winter has been long and cold. Where are the cracks that you can widen in yourself, to let in the spring? You belong in the sunlight, it insists.
