Paz in Fury, 1968

Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature last week, wrote this small poem in memory of the “massacre of Tlatelolco,” after Mexican troops killed an unknown number--some said it was hundreds--of student demonstrators shortly before the Olympic Games of 1968. Paz, in protest, resigned his post as Mexican ambassador to India. INTERRUPTIONS FROM THE WEST (3) (Mexico City: The 1968 Olympiad) for Dore and Adja Yunkers Lucidity (perhaps it’s worth writing across the purity of this page) is not lucid it is fury (yellow and black mass of bile in Spanish) spreading over the page. Why? Guilt is anger turned against itself: if an entire nation is ashamed it is a lion poised to leap. (The municipal employees wash the blood from the Plaza of the Sacrificed.) Look now, stained before anything worth it was said: lucidity. INTERMITENCIAS DEL OESTE (3) (Mexico: Olimpiada de 1968) A Dore y Adja Yunkers La limpidez (quiza valga la pena escribirlo sobre la limpieza de esta hoja) no es limpida: es una rabia (amarilla y negra acumulacion de bilis en espanol) extendida sobre la pagina. Por que? La verguensa es ira vuelta contra uno mismo: si una nacion entera se averguenza es leon que se agazapa para saltar. (Los empleados municipales lavan la sangre en la Plaza de los Sacrificios.) Mira ahora, manchada antes de haber dicho algo que valga la pena, la limpidez. Copyright 1987 by Octavio Paz, by permission of New Directions. Translated by Eliot Weinberger.