José Cueli: Memory of “listen to me like someone who hears the rain”

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And despite the loss of lives, businesses in the most vulnerable areas, traffic accidents due to the downpours that flood the city, and that have us panicking, we are left with nothing but the memory of Octavio Paz and his poetry.

“Listen to me like someone who hears the rain, without hearing, listening with what I say, with eyes open inward, asleep with all five senses awake, it rains, light footsteps, murmur of syllables…”

What splendid beauty there is in Octavio Paz's song when he says: "Listen to me like someone who hears the rain..."

How sad it was to hear the rain this summer, when Octavio Paz's poetry reminded us of the lapping of sidewalks as we turned corners and the bends of pauses and sounds, and the raindrops that made a blurred rhythm, words vaguer, softer, weaker, more distant, until they became almost imperceptible, and their rain is nothing more than a murmur like the last echo of steam after it has disappeared.

How different the rains have sounded this year: since the rain has become terrifying. In the past, at dusk, accompanied by the song that will become the Mexican song, of: Hear me as one who hears the rain, neither attentive nor distracted, light footsteps, drizzle, water that is air, air that is time, a day that never quite goes away .

How Octavio's poetry glides across the pencil, a poet who is an idea, a song that is a word, to become intense and penetrating like rain, to finally disappear, through the distance of sounds; to acquire all its strength within, in the exhalation of the vibrant sound that is the breath when he rises and walks, the night opens and looks at me and it is you and your breathy figure, you and your night face, you and your hair, slow lightning .

How splendidly Octavio’s verse shines as it floats in the void without touching it, “listen to me like someone who hears the rain, neither attentive nor distracted, light steps, drizzle…” and feelings in turmoil become legion, transcending perceptions and turning into thoughts that violate the autonomous barriers of the personality to evoke memories, integrate images, develop and take on very defined forms, which end up belonging to and singing and integrating the man from the countryside, now in the city, in a rhythmic tone, of great melody, like the rain that touches without touching.

How musically Octavio Paz's verse fades away, with his son laden with popular essences, in which language and myth are vast metaphors for reality, and the essence of language is symbolic, because it consists of representing one element of reality by another, as occurs in metaphors in rapid evolution that go back and forth from one idea to another, articulating the incoherent and giving the word its own magic; Mexican magic, that of disjointed and dislocated phrases, that of nameless rumors and inarticulate sounds in search of the mother who is leaving. The magic of "hear me and come closer to hear me," which is a rhythm that seeks the word that integrates and traces the origin . How beautiful is "hear me like someone who hears it raining..."!