J. M.

On a certain public way there is a certain door,

Unyielding, with its bell and its precise

Number, and the tang of a not to be found paradise

Which in the evening sunlight render free of accesss no more,

Or not; to me The day's work finished quite,

A dearly awaited voice would wait for me

In the disintegration of the day

And in the peace of the embracing night.

No more of that. My fate is otherwise:

Empty and idle hours, and impure

Memory, and the abuse of literature,

And at the border, death, beyond surmise.

All I want is that stone. I ask just this:

The sum of two units abstract dates, and nothingness.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1996) the Argentinian bard essayist, and short story writer, was the greatest in quantity translated Latin American writer of the twentieth hundred His books of ficton include Six enigmas for Don Isidro Parodi (1942) Ficciones (1944) the The Aleph and Other Stories (1949)

Robert Mezey and Richard Barnes have translated above four hundred of Borge's piece of poetrys into formal English verse. Their bring togethered Borges will be published through Penguin in 1997. Both Mezey and Barnes teach at Pomona College

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Mar 1996

Provided by the agency of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved