“It opens, the gate to the garden with the docility of a page”*

by chuckofish

Today we celebrate the birthday of the great Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Read some poetry. Drink some wine.

With Sir Thomas Browne

Defend me, Lord. (That I’m calling you

implicates No One. It’s only a word

from the drill the disengaged can use,

and this evening of dread, I write it.)

Defend me from me. They have also said this,

Montaigne and Browne and a Spaniard I don’t know;

something stays in me amid all this gold

that my darkening eyes still decipher.

Defend me, Lord, from an impatient

appetite for becoming marble or oblivion;

defend me from being what I have been,

the one I have been irreparably.

Not from the sword or the blood-stained lance

but, oh, protect me from expectation.

(Translated from the Spanish by Evelyn Hooven)

*”Simplicity” by JLB