“El Cántaro Roto”

or, “The Broken Water-Jug” por Octavio Paz translated into English by Michael Lee The inner eye unfolds and a world of frenzy and flame is born underneath the dreamer’s sleeping face: blue suns, green whirlwinds, beaks of light that open stars like pomegranates, a solitary sunflower, golden eye turning in the middle of a scorched path, forests of sound crystal, forests of echos and answers and waves, a dialogue of transparencies, wind, galloping water between the endless walls of a jet ravine, a horse, a comet, a rocket that embeds itself right in the heart of the night, feathers and water-jets, feathers, the sudden flowering of torches, candles, wings, an invasion of white, island birds singing behind the face of the dreamer! I opened my eyes, raised them to heaven and saw how the night was covered with stars. Living islands, bracelets of blazing islands, burning, breathing stones, clusters of living rock, So many fountains! What clarity! What a spray of comet-tails over the dark ridge!1 How many rivers above! And that faint sound of water next to fire, of light against shadow! Harps, gardens of harps. But there was nobody at my side. Only the plains: the cactus, and acacia, and great boulders that burst under the sun. No crickets chirped, and there was the roaming aroma of lime and burnt seeds, the streets of the village were as dry streams and the air itself would have broken into a thousand pieces if someone had even only shouted “Who goes there?” Bald hills, a cold volcano, stone and the sound of panting under so much splendor, and drought, and the taste of dust, the murmur of naked feet in the dust, and the cashew tree2 in the middle of the plain like a petrified water-jet! Tell me, drought, tell me, scalded earth, earth of pulverized bones, tell me, dying moon, is there no water? Is there only blood, only dust, only naked footsteps on the pricker-bush, only rags and insect fare and torpor beneath the merciless noonday sun like a golden tyrant? Are there no whinnying horses on the riverbank, between the great, round, resplendent boulders, at the still pool, under the green light of the leaves and the cries of men and women bathing at dawn? The corn-god, the flower-god, the water-god, the blood-god, the Virgin, have they all died, have they gone, broken water-jugs at the edge of the chokéd3 fountain? Is only the toad alive, does only the ugly-greenish toad twinkle and sparkle in the Mexican night, is only the fat tyrant of Cempoala immortal? Stretched out at the foot of the divine jade tree watered with blood, while two young slaves fan him, always to the fore on the days of grand processions, leaning against the cross: gun and walking stick in hand, in battle attire, the sculpted flint face breathing like a precious incense the smoke of the executions4, spending the weekends in his armored-bunker house next to the sea, with his lover covered in her neon jewels, is only the toad immortal? Look here at the cold, green fury and its tail of razors and broken glass, look here at the dog and his mangy howl, 1 “qué caballeras sobre una espalda oscura” is translated by Lysander Kemp as “those long locks agaisnt a dark shoulder.” However, this is far too literal, and takes into account the common, but non sequitur, translation of “cabelleras” as “long hair.” An alternate translation of “cabelleras,” used here, is “comet-tails.” 2 “pirú,” the Mexican Spanish equivalent of “turbinto,” a member of the family Anacardiaceae. 3 “cegada,” blocked off or blocked up. 4 “fusilamientos,” specifically, executions by firing squad.

at the taciturn agave5, at the prickly pear and the spiky candelabra6, look at the flower that bleeds and draws blood, the flower whose unyielding and incisive shape is like a delicate instrument of torture, look here at the night of long teeth and sharp-edged glances, the night that flays with its invisible flint, hear the teeth grind against the teeth, hear the bones pound against the bones, the drum of human skin struck with the thighbone, the drum of the chest struck with the furious heel, the tam-tam of the eardrum struck by the delirious sun, look here at the dust that rises like a yellow king and melts7 everything and dances alone and then collapses like a tree whose roots have suddenly dried up, like a tower that falls with one slash, look here at the man that falls and stands and eats dust and crawls, at the human insect that drills holes in the rock and the centuries and gnaws at the light, look here at the broken stone, at the broken man, at the broken light. Is it the same to open one’s eyes as to close them? Inner castles that set fire to the thoughts because another more pure has risen, only brilliance and blaze, the seed of an image that grows until it is a tree and it cracks the skull, the word that seeks lips to speak it, over the ancient human fountain there fell great boulders, there are centuries of boulders, years of gravestones, cumbersome stone minutes falling over the human fountain. Tell me, drought, stone polished by toothless time, by toothless hunger, dust ground further by teeth that are centuries, by centuries that are hunger, tell me, broken water-jug fallen in the dust, tell me, is the light born by rubbing bone against bone, man against man, hunger against hunger, until the spark finally emerges, the scream, the word, until the water finally gushes and the tree with wide turquoise leaves finally grows? We must sleep with open eyes, we must dream with our hands, let us dream active dreams like a river seeking its riverbed, dreams of the sun dreaming up its worlds, we must dream aloud, we must sing until the song shoots forth roots, trunk, branches, birds, stars, sing until the dream conceives in the sleeper’s side the red wheat-ear of resurrection, the water like woman, the spring from which we drink and look at and confess to and recollect ourselves, the source from which we glean knowledge of man, the water that talks alone in the night and calls us by name, the spring of the words to say I, you, he, we, under the great living statue tree of the rain, to say the beautiful pronouns and know ourselves and be faithful to our names we must dream backwards, towards the fountain, we must row up over the centuries, beyond infancy, beyond the beginning, beyond the baptism waters, we must throw down the walls between man and man, must join anew that which was parted, life and death are not opposite worlds, we are one sprout with two twin flowers, we must exhume the lost word, must dream within and without, must decode the tattoo of the night and look face-to-face at the noonday sun and tear off its mask, bathe in the sun’s light and eat the nocturnal fruit, spell out the script of the stars and of the river, record the speech of the blood and tide, the earth and the body, return to the point of departure, neither inside nor out, neither above nor underneath, at the crossroads, at which all roads begin, because the light sings with a watery murmur, with a leafy murmur sings the water and the daybreak is loaded with fruit, the day and the night reconciled and flowing like a tame river, the day and the night caress each other slowly like a man and a woman in love, like a single endless river flow seasons and mankind under the centuries’ arches backwards, to the living center of the world’s birth, beyond both the end and the beginning.

5 “maguey,” known in English as the American agave (Agave americana) or “century plant.” 6 “candelabro,” a type of cactus that grows throughout Mexico and produces fruit known as “tunas,” “peladas,” or “chulas.” 7 “descuaja” is translated as Kemp as “uproots,” but I prefer the alternate translation, “melts.”