The article presents an analysis of a fragment from ‘Natural being’ – a poem in prose dedicated to a Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, from Octavio Paz’s ‘Eagle or Sun?’ (1951). The author shows how Paz translates into a poetical form ideas formulated in the essay written concurrently as a comment to the first exhibition of Tamayo in Paris, finds parallels with the two later essays about the artist and reveals some correspondences between poetical and visual images.