Ecopoesia

Variations on a Solar Theme

Homero Aridjis

1

 

The Sun, an eye.

If not a thinking eye, an igneous eye.

No one has gone so far as to call it

a living eye, a consciousness.

 

2

 

The total eye of the finite was her from the

            beginning.

The eye of yellow thoughts

awakened the grays and greens.

The radiant eye of the daybreaks

wound up set into the instant.

The mythologies’ wingèd eye,

humming in the middle of the town square.

 

3

 

The ladder of light I go up

is the same one I come down now.

 

The white light raining down on us

comes from the Sun that has set.

 

Even in the dark I am staring at you,

even blindly I take you in with open palms.

 

Oh, yellow seed,

Oh air wearing white light

 

4

 

Which god besotted with light

thought up this yellow splendor

within the confines of the universe?

 

What mad eye stayed open

poring over this glory

within the limits of itself?

 

5

 

In the hallucinatory silence,

an eye gained a shape and a nothing.

In some part of your head

light’s dream has begun.

 

6

 

I hear the jingle of keys

opening the doors to the light,

and bathed in sun,

everything I behold is shadow.

 

7

 

After so many rainy

days the Sun appeared

floating in the firmament,

and under a dark cloud

its golden fingers

shed light on the Earth

 

8

 

Does the solar eye dream of the Earth

sear everything with its senses

or do we dream the eye that sears us

dream us?

 

Are we inside the living eye

that thinks us and watches over us

or are we—as it is—passing images

in the head of a god unknown?

 

 

 

Aridjis, Homero. "Variations on a Solar Theme." Poemas solares: Solar Poems. Trans. George McWhirter. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010. pp. 31-37.




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