Head by the soul, footsteps
in the mind more than shadows,
shadows of thought more than footsteps
through the path of echoes
that memory invents and erases:
without walking they walk
over this present, bridge
slung from one letter to the next.
Like drizzle on embers,
footsteps within me step
toward places that turn to air.
Names: they vanish
in a pause between two words.
The sun walks through the rubble
of what I'm saying; the sun
razes the places as they dawn,
hesitantly, on this page;
the sun opens my forehead,
balcony
perched within me.

~Octavio Paz