Adam Cast Forth
Was there a Garden or was the Garden a dream?
Amid the fleeing light, I have slowed myself and queried,
Almost for consolation, if the bygone period
Over which this Adam, wretched now, once reigned supreme,
Might not have been just a magical illusion
Of that God I dreamed. Already it's imprecise
In my memory, the clear paradise,
But I know it exists, in flower and profusion,
Although not for me. My punishment for life
Is the stubborn earth with the incestuous strife
Of Cains and Abels and their brood; I await no pardon.
Yet, it's much to have loved, to have known true joy,
To have had -- if only for just one day --
The experience of touching the living Garden.
Jorge Luis Borges (translated by Richard Eberhart)
The Art of Poetry
To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.
To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.
To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.
To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness -- such in poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.
Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.
They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.
Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
Jorge Luis Borges
BIO: Jorge Luis Borges (24 Aug 1899 - 14 Jun 1986) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He published poems and essays in surrealist literary journals and became a big proponent of preserving Argentine folklore and history. In 1955, he became director of the National Public Library. A Professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires (he was bilingual in both Spanish and English), he became blind by the age of 55. He received the first Formentor Prize in 1961, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. His works became popular internationally in the 1960s. In 1971, he earned the Jerusalem Prize. He went on to create novels and screenplays and was well-known for his lectures. He died of liver cancer in 1986.
