Renga, I 7

by Octavio Paz
translated from the Spanish (by Daniel Eckroad)

tule fog, hill’s breath, ghost
in the low grass (below your arch, night sleeps,
wrapped in a vigil of ashes):

snaking journey: the mouth
of the cave, tombstone the moon
opens—“abra-cadaver!”

I enter the alcove of your eyelids
your eye dissolves the mirrors: hammam of the dead
resurrection without my own name

I am a cluster of anonymous syllables

-

now, there is no one in the underground
chamber (seashell, ammonite, house of echoes)
no one but this sleep-talking spiral,
script that your traveling eyes, as they utter,
they annul—and annul you, yourself sea-
shell, ammonite, hollow room, lector.