Jorge Luis Borges. Three Poems.

Jorge Luis Borges-Esteban Moore, Buenos Aires, 1975.
Strolling to Confitería Richmond.


















Jorge Luis Borges. Three poems.
Versions Esteban Moore, Buenos Aires, 2009.






Le regret d’Heraclite

I, the man in whom so many were
Shall never be him in whose arms
Matilda Urbach knew love.

Gaspar Camerarius, en Deliciae Poetarum Borussiae, VII, 16.







Sonnet to wine

In what kingdom, in what century, under what silent
conjunction of the stars, on what secret day
that stone has not preserved, emerged the valiant
and singular idea of inventing mirth and play ?
With autumns of gold it was created. Wine
flows red along with the generations
and on the ardous road like the river of time
pours on us its music, its fire and its lions.
On the night of joy or on the hostile day
it exalts the glee or soothes the horror
and this new dythiramb that I sing today
was sung by the Arab and Persian before.

Wine, show me the art of seeing my own history
As if it were already a handful of ashes in memory.





To Wine




Your name shines in Homer's bronze
Black wine that brightens up man's soul.

For centuries and more from hand to hand you've gone
From the Greek's rhyton to the German's horn.

You were there in the dawn. On the way you bestowed
Your fire and your lions to the generations.

By that other river of night and days
Flows yours acclaimed by friends and mirth.

Wine that along the world's history runs
Like a Euphrates, patriarchal and profound.

In your living crystal our eyes have found
A red methaphor of Christ's blood.

In the impassioned verses of the Sufi
You are the scimitar, the rose and the ruby.

Let others in your Lethe sad forgetfulness drink;
The joy of shared fervor in you I seek.

Sesame that opens ancient nights for me
And in the hard darkness, alms and candlestick.

Wine of mutual love or red conflict
I'll summon you some day. So be it.