After the Fire

Sight and Touch
for Balthus

by Octavio Paz


The light holds them-- weightless, real--
the white hill and the black oaks,
the path that runs on,
the tree that remains;

the rising light seeks its way,
a wavering river that sketches
its doubts and turns them to certainties,
a river of dawn across closed eyes;

the light sculpts the wind in the curtains,
makes each hour a living body,
comes into the room and slips off,
slipperless, along the edge of a knife;

the light creates a woman in a mirror,
naked under the diaphanous leaves,
a glance can enchain her,
she vanishes with a blink;

the light touches the fruit, touches the invisible,
a pitcher for the eyes to drink clarity,
a clipped flower of flame, a sleepless candle
where the butterfly with black wings burns;

the light smoothes the creases in the sheets
and the folds of puberty,
it smolders in the fireplace, its flames shadows
that climb the walls like yearning ivy;

the light does not absolve or condemn,
it is neither just nor unjust,
the light with invisible hands constructs
the buildings of symmetry;

the light goes off through a path of reflections
and comes back to itself:
a hand invents itself, an eye
that sees itself in its own inventions.

Light is time thinking about itself.