Three Variations on Octavio Paz's "Blanco"

Image borrowed from Bing

Three Variations on Octavio Paz's "Blanco"


BLANCO 1 : A VARIATION IN SEVEN SEGMENTS FOR OCTAVIO PAZ

1. white as the land looks the vultures white also circle above each one a soul glows white on horizon or on page

2. the land is the land it is white thunderheads cover it drumbeats joining the land & the sky

3. sky receptive to thunder drumbeats to sky white to colors faces to eyes sand turning white like the sky

4. green is also a color like flesh stung by thorns my body or yours sparks a rage like a drumbeat violent mineral white

5. uproots trees marks the land like a body shattered by lightning the word once proclaimed white turns yellow

6. those who beat on a waterdrum spines tightly pressed to a wall & the drumbeat spreads violet ash on the sky a sun glowing white

7. language a desert pink everywhere seeds in your mouth like white crows & more drumbeats a flute turns everything white

BLANCO 2: A VARIATION IN FIVE SEGMENTS FOR OCTAVIO PAZ

1. A clarity of all the senses lingers leaving on the mouth & face a white precipitation sculptures crystal-thin blank space translucid whirlpools

2. Is it a pilgrimage that brings us dancing in a ring into a forest where our thoughts are white the only signs our steps that break the silence

3. Green would be better a slim defile through which we pass an archipelago the shadow of a syllable a white reflection

4. Is it red or is it blue this dazzlement that blinds us numbers dancing in the void like things a final clarity no longer white

5. Thoughts fade winds cease forgetfulness erases truth there is a deeper music in the words we speak yellow isn’t white & amethyst is just a color

BLANCO 3: A VARIATION IN NINE SEGMENTS FOR OCTAVIO PAZ

1. Presentiment & penumbra hide the river where the sand still white buries a palm a pike emerging skewers our vowels as we speak

2. Blood fills the mouth the chest counts anxious minutes as the dead might undulations of a copper lamp high overhead casting a shadow

3. Transparency in daylight where a river seeks a river poles apart the consonants feel heavy water vanishes the drought starts up

4. The Spanish centuries remain anonymous against my forehead silt obscures a castle coal burns yellow patience ends a white confusion covers all

5. What does the vase hold? blood & bones not flowers the sad reality of words a language of atonement silences & syllables white as this dust

6. No further clarity than this no histories or hieroglyphs to guide us dunes & water all around conspiracies of light absent survivors

7. White bones appeasement hard to find or patience when we climb the ladder mineshafts open up below a red hand beckons

8. His source is Mexico his language set apart from all the others white on white

9. pulsebeat quickens on the playing card he holds a foliage unfolds for him a language no one reads a river rife with whitecaps rolling by


Jerome Rothenberg

Posted over on his site Poems & Poetics

[NOTE. The preceding poems were commisioned & prepared for "Trans-Poetic Exchange: A colloquium on Haroldo de Campos and Octavio Paz's poem 'Blanco'" at Stanford University, January 29-30, 2010. An invitation toward what de Campos called "transcreation" & I called "othering," the method employed here is one I've used in The Lorca Variations & elsewhere. (J.R.)]