Uno de Borges

Two English Poems

I

The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived
the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all hues
of deep soil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away,
half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights
act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends:
some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the
smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no
use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly
beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the
lilt of your laughter: these are illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find them; I tell them to
the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life...
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me,
I want your hidden look, your real smile - that lonely,
mocking smile your cool mirror knows.



***
As I rewrite Borges' poem I recall his Pierre Menard, for I needed to write this last night, just as it is, with all these words in their exact order and position. But my writing is yet incomplete, for it lacks your reading eyes to pass by and follow the words's secret or explicit meanings into unfathomable depths.