Sunday 26 May 2013

Elegy - Jorge Luis Borges

Oh destiny of Borges
to have sailed across the diverse seas of the world
or across that single and solitary sea of diverse names,
to have been a part of Edinburgh, of Zürich, of the two
    Cordobas,
of Columbia and of Texas,
to have returned at the end of changing generations
to the ancient lands of his forebears,
to Andalucia, to Portugal and to those countries
where the Saxon warred with the Dane and they mixed their
    blood,
to have wandered through the red and tranquil labyrinth of
    London,
to have grown old in so many mirrors,
to have sought in vain the marble gaze of the statues,
to have questioned lithographs, encyclopedias, atlases,
to have seen the things that men see,
death, the sluggish dawns, the plains,
and the delicate stars,
and to have seen nothing, or almost nothing
except the face of a girl from Buenos Aires
a face that does not want you to remember it.
Oh destiny of Borges,
perhaps no stranger than your own.

2 comments:

  1. wow. this one's really doing it... congrats

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wish I could take any credit for this, but it's by Borges.

    ReplyDelete