“After all these years I have observed that
beauty, like happiness, is frequent. A day does not pass when we are not, for
an instant, in paradise. There is no poet, however mediocre, who has not
written the best line in literature, but also the most miserable ones. Beauty
is not a privilege of a few illustrious names. It would be rare if this book
did not contain one single line worthy of staying with you to the end.” –Jorge
Luis Borges
The Dream
by Jorge Luis Borges
While the clocks of the midnight hours are
squandering
an abundance of time,
I shall go, farther than the shipmates of
Ulysses,
to the territory of dream, beyond the reach
of human memory.
From that underwater world I save some fragments,
inexhaustible to my understanding:
grasses from some primitive botany,
animals of all kinds,
conversations with the dead,
faces which all the time are masks,
words out of very ancient languages,
and at times, horror, unlike anything
the day can offer us.
I shall be all or no one. I shall be the other
I am without knowing it, he who has looked on
that other dream, my waking state. He weighs it
up,
resigned and smiling.
El sueño
Cuando
los relojes de la media noche prodiguen
Un
tiempo generoso,
Iré
más lejos que los bogavantes de Ulises
A
la región del sueño, inaccessible
A
la memoria humana.
De
esa region inmersa rescato restos
Que
no acabo de comprender:
Hierbas
de sencilla botánica,
Animales
algo diversos,
Diálogos
con los muertos,
Rostros
que realmente son mascaras,
Palabras
de lenguajes muy antiguos
Y
a veces un horro incomparable
Al
que nos puede dar el día.
Seré
todos o nadie. Seré el otro
Que
sin saberlo soy, el que ha mirado
Ese
otro sueño, mik vigilia. La juzga,
Resignado
y sonriente.
