i search through a moment

i can't recall off hand how i found this poet, it might have been through Neruda. anyhow, this is a favorite excerpt from 'Piedra de sol'
by Octavio Paz


"I travel along the edge of your thoughts,
and my shadow falls from your white forehead,
my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces
and go with no body, groping my way,

the endless corridors of memory, the doors
that open into an empty room
where all the summers have come to rot,
jewels of thirst burn at its depths,
the face that vanishes upon recall,
the hand that crumbles at my touch,
the hair spun by a mob of spiders
over the smiles of years ago,

setting out from my forehead, I search,
I search without finding, search through a moment,
a face of storm and lightning-flashes
racing through the trees of night,
a face of rain in a darkened garden,
relentless water that flows by my side,

I search without finding, I write alone,
there's no one here, and the day falls,
the year falls, I fall with the moment,
I fall to the depths, invisible path
over mirrors repeating my shattered image,
I walk through the days, the trampled moments,
I walk through all my thoughts of my shadow,
I walk through my shadow in search of a moment,

I search for an instant alive as a bird,
for the sun of five in the afternoon..."