Status Updates From Selected Poems, 1923-1967

You who so much loved your England
And did not name her—
Today you are but a few words
That Germanic scholars annotate;
Today you are my voice
When it calls back to life your iron words.
Of my gods or of the sum of time I ask
That my days attain oblivion,
That like Ulysses I may be called No One,
But that some verse of mine survive
On a night favorable to memory
Or in the mornings of men.
(from TO A SAXON POET)

To look at the river made of time and water
And remember that time is another river,
To know that we are lost like the river
And that faces dissolve like water.

*****

They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels
Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca,
Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of marvels.

(from ARS POETICA)

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table
There must be one which I will never read.
…..
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that
fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

(from LIMITS)

I was carried to this ruinous hour
by the intricate labyrinth of steps
woven by my days from a day that goes
back to my birth. At last I’ve discovered
the mysterious key to all my years,
the fate of Francisco de Laprida,
the missing letter, the perfect pattern
that was known to God from the beginning.
In this night’s mirror I can comprehend
my unsuspected true face. The circle’s
about to close…

Under the spell of the refreshing darkness
and intimidated by the threat of dawn,
I felt again that tremendous conjecture
of Schopenhauer and Berkeley
which declares the world
an activity of the mind,
a dream of souls,
without foundation or purpose or volume.

(from DAYBREAK)

Started reading these poems to put me to bed. Borges’s mind is ssssoooo dreamy 🩶

“My stories are, in a sense, outside of me. I dream them, shape them, and set them down; after that, once sent out into the world, they belong to others. All that is personal to me, all that my friends good-naturedly tolerate in me — my likes and dislikes, my hobbies, my habits — are to be found in my verse. In the long run, perhaps, I shall or fall by my poems.”