No more clichés

Hadn't read anything by Octavio Paz before, then stumbled across him earlier. He was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature. This is from his obituary: On November 11, 1997 and international news agency reported Octavio Paz's death, sparking a darkly humorous phone call from the author, bedridden with bone cancer, to a local television station. He said, "the art of dying is the art of playing hide and seek, but you have to know how to play this art, which is the most delicate of all... and difficult."

This poem is called No More Clichés:

Beautiful face That like a daisy opens its petals to the sun So do you Open your face to me as I turn the page.

Enchanting smile Any man would be under your spell, Oh, beauty of a magazine.

How many poems have been written to you? How many Dantes have written to you, Beatrice? To your obsessive illusion To you manufacture fantasy.

But today I won't make one more cliché And write this poem to you. No, no more clichés.

This poem is dedicated to those women Whose beauty is in their charm, In their intelligence, In their character, Not on their fabricated looks.

This poem is to you women, That like a Shahrazade wake up Everyday with a new story to tell, A story that sings for change That hopes for battles: Battles for the love of the united flesh Battles for passions aroused by a new day Battle for the neglected rights Or just battles to survive one more night.

Yes, to you women in a world of pain To you, bright star in this ever-spending universe To you, fighter of a thousand-and-one fights To you, friend of my heart.

From now on, my head won't look down to a magazine Rather, it will contemplate the night And its bright stars, And so, no more clichés.

Octavio Paz