The Other

Exactly where does that look come from
which sometimes rises to meet my eyes
when from a long way off I let them come to rest on a face?

It's like the water in a reservoir
welling up out of its mystery,
a depth on the other side of time
trembling with some dark memory.

Transformation, double enchantment
exposing in me a different self
behind that person I pretend to be
whose look is focused on something else.

- Julio Cortazar, trans. by Stephen Kessler