Tuesday, September 8, 2020

a moment outside the moment









From birth to death time surrounds us

with its intangible walls.
We fall with the centuries, the years, the minutes.
Is time only a falling, only a wall?
For a moment, sometimes, we see
not with our eyes but with our thoughts
time resting in a pause.
The world half-opens and we glimpse
the immaculate kingdom,
the pure forms, presences
unmoving, floating
on the hour, a river stopped:
truth, beauty, numbers, ideas
and goodness, a word buried
in our century.
A moment without weight or duration,
a moment outside the moment:
thought sees, our eyes think.








~ Octavio Paz





2 comments:

erin said...

yes))

and sometimes i rail against time,

however, it is this falling, it is the loss, which grants everything meaning. if i had this day forever, what would forever mean? even in terms of the poem that i posted today about love, if we could bank on the foreverness of love, what significance would it have? it is the falling, it is the loss, it is this moment gone already which causes me to be present in this next moment, which happens to be gone already.

it is a real perplexity, isn't it?:)

xo
erin

Dean Keller said...

thanks erin, well said. peering through the illusory veil of time whether at actual the death of a loved one, or by contemplation of endings, of loss, creates a moment of sacredness. a moment cleared of mind and culture and story, an intimate opening in which even 'I' is left behind.

dean