Jorge Luis Borges
Doomsday
It will be when the trumpet sounds, as in St. John the Divine.
It was already in 1757, according to the witness of Swedenborg.
It was in Israel when the she-wolf nailed the flesh of Christ to the
cross, but not only then.
It happens in every throb of your blood.
There is no moment that may not be the crater of Hell.
There is no moment that may not be the water of Heaven.
There is no moment not loaded like a gun.
In every moment you may be Cain or Siddartha, the mask or the
face.
In every moment Helen of Troy may reveal her passion for you.
In every moment the cock may have crowed the third time.
In every moment the waterclock lets its last drop fall.
(Translated from the Spanish by Dick Barnes)
Jorge Luis Borges
Fourteen-Syllable Lines
To my city of courtyards deep and hollow as pitchers
and of narrow streets that slice through the miles as if in flight,
to my city of red sunset-aureoled street corners
and of azure outskirts made out of pieces of the sky,
to my city spreading out as spacious as the pampas,
I returned from the ancient countries of the Occident
to recover its houses and the light of its houses
and all night long the light of its warehouses and storefronts,
and I saw at the edge of town that love that belongs to all,
and at the moment of sunset my breast bled praise and psalms
and I sang the accepted habit of being alone
and the red remnant of the pampas closed in the courtyard.
I spoke of the ferris-wheel, that waterwheel of Sundays,
and the thick wall that halves the shade of a Paradise tree,
and the fate that silently lies in wait in the knifeblade,
and the night full of fragrances, like a seasoned mató.
I foresaw the inwardness of the expression the edge,
phrase that on dry land implies all the hazards of water
and gives to outlying slums their sense of endless danger
and to weedy vacant lots a feeling of open beach.
And so I go on paying back to God a few small coins
out of the infinite treasure He places in my hands.
(Translated from the Spanish by Robert Mezey and Dick Barnes)
Jorge Luis Borges
James Joyce
In one man’s day are all of history’s:
from that inconceivable first day ever,
when a terrible God fixed days and agonies,
down to that other when the ubiquitous river
of time on earth flows backward to its source,
which is Eternity, and quenches there
future and past in this moment, all I possess.
Between sunrise and nightfall will occur
our universal history. From the night
I can see Hebrew roads under my feet,
and Carthage sacked and laid waste street by street,
and black Hell, and the Glory of the Light.
Grant me the nerve and energy, Lord, I pray,
to climb the weary summit of this day.
(Translated from the Spanish by Dick Barnes and Robert Mezey)
Jorge Luis Borges
Junín
I am, but also I am the other, the dead,
The other man of my own name and kin:
I am a vague gentleman, I am the man
Who stopped the desert lancers in their blood.
I never have been here, yet have come back
To this Junín of yours, grandfather Borges;
Can you hear me, shade, can you hear me, ultimate ashes,
In your sleep of bronze, or is my voice too weak?
Perhaps through my vain eyes you’re looking for
The epical Junín of your regiments,
The tree you planted here, the wire fence,
The captured Indians and the spoils of war.
I imagine you a little sad, severe.
No one can tell me how or who you were.
Junín, 1966
(Translated from the Spanish by Dick Barnes)
Jorge Luis Borges
Truco
Forty playing cards have taken the place of life.
Brightly colored talismans of pasteboard,
they make us forgetful of our fates
and a most agreeable creation
peoples the stolen hours
with the theatrical mischief
of a home-made mythology.
At the frontier of the card-table
the lives of others are denied entry.
Inside, there is another country:
exploits of claim and challenge,
the authority of the Ace of Swords,
all-powerful like don Juan Manuel,
and the 7 of Coins jingling its hope.
Balky hesitations
keep interrupting the words,
and just as all the possible decisions
come up again and again,
the men playing tonight
repeat the ancient tricks:
all of which revives a little, a very little,
the generations of the forefathers
who bequeathed to the idle hours of Buenos Aires
the same rhymes, the same lies and deviltries.
(Translated from the Spanish by Dick Barnes and Robert Mezey)
