Oh, sunflower seer,
oh, yellow seed,
your name fits in a single syllable, said the poet
Oh, father of mythologies,
the dream of light produces shapes,
said the painter
If the eye were not solar,
how would it be able to see the light,
said the poet
If the light were not a master of color,
how would it be able to paint her eyes,
said the painter
The sun rises on the Great Pyramid of Giza every
day,
night sets in the Orient of your eyes every morning,
said the poet
The Sun doesn’t set on the horizon,
the Sun knows no night,
what darkens is the eye, said the painter
I don’t need to go into afternoon fields
to see the glories of the Sun for the Sun
of mythologies is the eye, said the poet
The Sun’s poem is infinite,
we can only paint it in words,
said the painter
Whenever the Sun speaks,
every creature goes quiet,
said the poet
The Sun is a Being,
the Sun is light present,
said the painter
Light’s infinite smile
is a verse that is a poem
that is a universe,
the thinking eye is a laughing eye,
the eye that thinks us we paint
with its own rays, said the poet
The Sun has no history,
the Sun lives in the eternity of the moment,
said the painter
The stripe-faced Sun is a jaguar
running through the night sky devouring shadows,
devouring instants, said the poet
The Sun erstwhile. A deified Sun.
The Sun in the mind. A demented Sun,
said the painter
Light’s history
is an archaeology of eyes,
said the poet
Intelligent light comes from the Sun
at the right temperature to paint your hands,
said the painter
The figure projecting shadow, the insubstantial
silhouette following you down the street, that’s me,
said the poet
What is a shadow,
a splendor on one’s back
and a blot on the ground, said the painter
The Sun is the shape of its love,
man bears in his eyes the shape of that love,
at life’s end man will be the specter of that love
At the end of the day, amid the long evening
shadows,
man will miss his past splendor,
said the painter
God doesn’t exist, said a third party,
God lives inside your head.
If you don’t think of Him, He dies, out of mind
If God doesn’t exist, who does?
Your shadow? your ghost? your un-memory?
replied the painter
God doesn’t exist,
a gigantic vacuum exists,
said the third party
If a gigantic vacuum exists,
something does exist then,
said the poet
Those are
nothing but words,
said the third party
If God didn’t exist,
neither would your words,
said the poet
Before dawn, my eyes
had already devised the creatures you see
at this moment under the Sun, said the painter
Everything began with an image,
everything began with the word light,
said the poet
When dogs bark at the Moon,
they’re actually barking at the Sun,
said the painter
The expanding universe fits into our minds,
into our expanding minds fit all the stars,
our mind is a verse towards the universe, said the
poet
I was struck by my own old age
the moment I saw the first gray hair on my
daughter’s head,
said the painter
Man’s task:
to not be sad under the light,
said the poet
The encyclopedia of the Sun is my bedside book.
The Sun’s encyclopedia is an eye blazing
through the closed covers, said the painter
In the corners of my library,
hidden amid thousands of words,
shines the poem of the Sun, said the poet
It’s odd I should never before
have drawn such dazzling figures
with rays of faint light, said the painter
Isn’t it odd that the poem of the Sun
arrives with the eyes closed and at night?
said the poet
The volatile nature of human beings,
the giving nature of things in the world
we owe to the Sun, said the painter
From seeing it so much my eyes have grown solar,
from so much naming of it my words glow,
said the poet
From painting its eyes so much I have been rendered
blind,
its images sear my fingers,
said the painter
The Sun’s portrait,
others will put the finish to,
said the poet
The poem of the Sun
began a long time ago,
said the poet
Oh, sunflower seer,
oh, yellow syllable,
said the poet
Midnight, Sunday-Monday,
February 23-24, 2003.
Aridjis, Homero. "Poem to the Sun." Poemas solares: Solar Poems. Trans. George McWhirter. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010. pp. 17-29.
