Invented by the Day

The work of art is always unfaithful to its creator... Art lays at a higher level; it says something more, and almost always, it says something different from what the artist wanted to say.
~Octavio Paz

Happy Poetry Friday! I like poems where time is a bit wibbly wobbly, and I haven't 100% settled into 2020 yet, so this poem by Octavio Paz appealed to me for today:



January First
by Octavio Paz
translated by Elizabeth Bishop with the author

The year's doors open
like those of language,
toward the unknown.
Last night you told me: tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.

I opened my eyes late.
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for the time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.

But no, the year had returned.
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.

read the rest here

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Kathryn Apel has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Kat!

I just added this to my "originals" page this morning: When I Grow Up, I Want To Be A Cat (for Christie).