jorge luis borges
(tr. terese coe)

 

Remorse

I have committed the vilest of any crime
a man can commit. I have not been happy.
Let the ruthless glaciers of forgetfulness
come wrench me out and lose me.

I was conceived by my parents for the perilous
and gorgeous game of life—for air and water,
fire and earth. I cheated them.
I was never happy.

Their youthful wishes were never served. Rather
I sank my mind in symmetric obstinacies
of art, which weave together nothings.

They bequeathed me courage. I was not courageous.
It will not let me be. It never leaves me:
this shadow of having been bitter.

 

Labyrinth (1)

There will never be a door. You are inside
and the palace encloses the universe
and has neither obverse nor reverse
nor outside wall nor hidden center.

Have no hope the harshness of your road,
doggedly forking into another,
doggedly forking into another,
will have an end. Your fate is made of iron,

like your judge. Do not wait for the fury
of the bull that is a man and whose grotesque
shape-shifting adds horror to the tangle

of endless interlocking stone.
It does not exist. Hope for nothing. Not even
the savage beast in the blackening dusk.

 

Things (1)

The cane, the assorted coins, the chain and keys,
the accommodating lock, the recent scribbles
these meager days now left to me will never
read, the board, the deck of cards and table,

the book and in its pages a crumpled violet,
monument to an evening doubtless never
to be forgotten, already forgotten,
the crimson western mirror

burning with dawn illusions. How many things,
thresholds, atlas, glasses, nail files, etchings,
serve us as if our own implicit slaves,

sightless and strangely reserved! They
will be here longer than our forgetting;

they will never know we’ve gone away.