Between What I See and What I Say. . .
for Roman Jakobson

1
Between what I see and what I say,
between what I say and what I keep silent,
between what I keep silent and what I dream,
between what I dream and what I forget:
poetry.
It slips
between yes and no,
says
what I keep silent,
keeps silent
what I say,
dreams
what I forget.
It is not speech:
it is an act.
It is an act
of speech.
Poetry
speaks and listens:
is real.
And as soon as I say
it is real,
it vanishes.
Is it then more real?

2
Tangible idea,
intangible
word:
poetry
comes and goes
between what is
and what is not.
It weaves
and unweaves reflections.
Poetry
scatters eyes on a page,
scatters words on our eyes.
Eyes speak,
words look,
looks think.
To hear
thoughts,
see
what we say,
touch
the body of an idea.
Eyes close,
the words open.

by Octavio Paz
from A Tree Within
Translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger

March Birthdays

March 3 John Austin (British, born 1790), Georg Cantor (German, born 1845), and William Godwin (British,born 1756)

March 6 Nikolai Berdyaev (Russian, born 1874), Donald Davidson (American, born 1917), and Juan Luis Vives (Spanish, born 1492)

March 12 George Berkeley (British, born 1685)

March 14 Maurice Merleau-Ponty (French, born 1908)

March 18 G.E.M. Anscombe (British, born 1919)

March 23 Edward Caird (Scottish, born 1835)

March 24 Antonio Rosmini (Italian, born 1797)

March 28 J. L. Austin (British, born 1911) and Daniel Dennett (American, born 1942)

March 30 Stanislaw Lesniewski (Polish, born 1886) and Moses Maimonides (Spanish, born 1135)

March 31 Rene Descartes (French, born 1596)