Los elementos de la noche / The Elements of the Night
Poetry , 1963
Tusquets
Pages: 56
In the middle of the night, life seems to reach its conclusion, but it is precisely in the deepest darkness that the light preceding dawn begins to manifest: that moment when the shadows recede and the day emerges with the inherent uncertainty of a new beginning. "Time spreads its wings" and "the day drifts away to nowhere... you began to die and realized that the mystery will never be exhausted. Awakening is a forest where what was lost is recovered and what was gained is destroyed. And the future day, a misery that finds you alone with your poor words."
Published between 1958 and 1962, the poems in The Elements of the Night feature nocturnal evocation and the anguished dawn as constants through which José Emilio Pacheco searches for enduring life.