UNLIKE THE FIRSTS OF LIFE, WE NEVER KNOW THE LAST'S

*

Jorge Luis Borges was born on this day in 1889.

In the earlier stanzas of his poem, “Limits,”

Borges ruminates on the fact that, though we are aware "there is a limit to all things and a measure,"

none of us can know the specifics —

the familiar street which we have already traveled for the last time,

the book in the stack upon the table which we will never get to read.

The concluding stanzas:


There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

*{This image is in the public domain because the copyright of this photograph, registered in Argentina, has expired.}