Vertigo of bodies

~ After Octavio Paz’s “Proema”

Yes it is true, everything is vertigo:
vertigo of bodies so madly, rapidly vibrating.
We think they are merely standing still.
Vertigo of children spinning in the churchyard,
laughing because now the steeple looks
like it is about to fall—
Then there is the vertigo produced
by certain flowers crushed to a pulp—
Sh, I will tell you one more secret:
when mixed with water they release
a flotilla of bubbles into the air
and even the sky is vertigo.
I have no aphorisms or epithets for this,
I have no virtuoso solos. But I agree
wholeheartedly with you when you drag me to the edge
of the cliff and make your anguished pronouncements
about what we don’t know, which is mostly
the future; and the birds reel overhead,
a scattering of wild letters.

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