Echoes: Verse 2, Jorge Luis Borges

Here is one of my favorite poems and a nice preface to my next post.  I will finish it up tonight and post it later.  I am feeling a little melancholy at the moment and don't feel like sharing the thoughts this poem invokes.  Maybe I will sleep it off.

Amorosa anticipación
Jorge Luís Borges

Ni la intimidad de tu frente clara como una fiesta
ni la costumbre de tu cuerpo, aun misterioso y tácito y de niña,
ni la sucesión de tu vida asumiendo palabras o silencios
serán favor tan misterioso
como mirar tu sueno implicado
en la vigilia de mis brazos.
Virgen milagrosamente otra vez por la virtud absolutoria del sueno,
quieta y resplandeciente como una dicha que la memoria elige,
me darás esa orilla de tu vida que tu misma no tienes.
Arrojado a quietud,
divisare esa playa ultima de tu ser
y te veré por vez primera, quizá,
como Dios ha de verte,
desbaratada la ficción del Tiempo,
sin el amor, sin mi.


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(for the non-spanish speakers)

Anticipation of Love
Jorge Luís Borges

Neither the intimacy of your look, your brow fair as a feast day,
nor the favor of your body, still mysterious, reserved, and childlike,
nor what comes to me of your life, settling in words or silence,
will be so mysterious a gift
as the sight of your sleep, enfolded
in the vigil of my arms.
Virgin again, miraculously, by the absolving power of sleep,
quiet and luminous like some happy thing recovered by memory,
you will give me that shore of your life that you yourself do not own.
Cast up into silence
I shall discern that ultimate beach of our being
and see you for the first time, perhaps,
as God must see you—
the fiction of Time destroyed,
free from love, from me.

(transl. by Robert Fitzgerald)