Bound By Symmetry | Jorge Luis Borges, "That One"

Jorge Luis Borges, “That One”

Oh days consecrated to the useless
office of forgetting the biography
of a lesser poet from the hemisphere
below, to whom the shades or the stars
bequeathed a body that leaves behind no son
and blindness, penumbra and prison,
and old age, aurora of death,
and fame, which nobody deserves,
and the habit of devising hendecasyllabics
and an old love of encyclopedias
and of fine calligraphic maps
and of fragile ivory and an incurable
nostalgia for Latin and fragmentary
memories of Edinburgh and Geneva
and the oblivion on dates and of names
and the cult of the Orient, which the peoples
of the miscellaneous Orient do not share,
and vigils glimmering with expectation,
and the abuse of etymology
and the iron of Saxon syllables
and the moon, which always surprises us
and that bad habit, Buenos Aires,
and the flavor of grapes and of water
and of cocoa, confection of Mexico,
and a few coins and a clock made of sand
and who, one afternoon, like so many others,
resigns himself to these verses.

Translation by Srikanth Reddy