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Poems of the Night( A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text)[POEMS OF THE NIGHT][Paperback]
Poems of the Night( A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text) <> Paperback <> JorgeLuisBorges <> PenguinBooks
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First published January 1, 2010
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About the author
Jorge Luis Borges
1,944 books14.2k followersJorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."
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February 16, 2022Here I am, writing into the night. I've explored Borges' Poems of the Night and it has been a much needed diversion from current events. The stars are still out, but the sky is a slate of gray around us, figuratively and literally. These are strange and depressive times and it would be easy to simply disappear into Borges' darkness, but there is still much beauty in it to decipher, so many silver sparkles against a dark gray.
From: Ars Poetica
To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold - such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.
I salute the poets of today, the ones who scribe the truth, the hurt. Poetry is in the streets, on the sidewalk holding signs, on Twitter in 140 characters, in our mouths as we say no to hate. Poetry is in the love we choose to show, the kindness in another's eyes, the compassion pouring in unbelievable waves from non-oppressed groups who fight the same fight. Poetry is in peace; poetry refutes anger, is much too expressive to be overpowered.
From: The Moon
The moon I know or the letters of its name
were created as a puzzle or a pun
for the human need to underscore in writing
our untold strangenesses, many or one.
These poems are philosophical reflections, visual renderings of light turned to darkness. Borges went blind in 1955, yet he continued his literary career. My favorite poems were written from 1927-1957, when he sensed the darkness creeping in on him and he recorded them. Some of the poems are remembrances, some a walk down a familiar street.
Big long-suffering street,
you are the only music my life has understood.
My copy consists of highlighted passages and notes, for although dark, these words are piercing, palpable. In addition to everything else he is known for, Borges was also a major Latin American poet who began writing poetry during World War I. He is a poet who believes in motifs, and this is usually what makes me choose a collection of poetry. The different masks he dons reminds me of Fernando Pessoa, in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, the restrained boldness of his words reminds me of Yusef Komunyakaa in Dien Cai Dau, and the bookish expressiveness that reaches to feel, not see, reminds me of Anna Akhmatova's Selected Poems. This collection now holds a special place in my heart and on my shelf.
Rough clouds the color of wine lees will stain the sky.
and dawn will come to my tightly closed eyes.
From: Ars Poetica
To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold - such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.
I salute the poets of today, the ones who scribe the truth, the hurt. Poetry is in the streets, on the sidewalk holding signs, on Twitter in 140 characters, in our mouths as we say no to hate. Poetry is in the love we choose to show, the kindness in another's eyes, the compassion pouring in unbelievable waves from non-oppressed groups who fight the same fight. Poetry is in peace; poetry refutes anger, is much too expressive to be overpowered.
From: The Moon
The moon I know or the letters of its name
were created as a puzzle or a pun
for the human need to underscore in writing
our untold strangenesses, many or one.
These poems are philosophical reflections, visual renderings of light turned to darkness. Borges went blind in 1955, yet he continued his literary career. My favorite poems were written from 1927-1957, when he sensed the darkness creeping in on him and he recorded them. Some of the poems are remembrances, some a walk down a familiar street.
Big long-suffering street,
you are the only music my life has understood.
My copy consists of highlighted passages and notes, for although dark, these words are piercing, palpable. In addition to everything else he is known for, Borges was also a major Latin American poet who began writing poetry during World War I. He is a poet who believes in motifs, and this is usually what makes me choose a collection of poetry. The different masks he dons reminds me of Fernando Pessoa, in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, the restrained boldness of his words reminds me of Yusef Komunyakaa in Dien Cai Dau, and the bookish expressiveness that reaches to feel, not see, reminds me of Anna Akhmatova's Selected Poems. This collection now holds a special place in my heart and on my shelf.
Rough clouds the color of wine lees will stain the sky.
and dawn will come to my tightly closed eyes.
April 16, 2011
If you haven't been asleep for the last fifty years like Rip Van Winkle, you probably know that Jorge Luis Borges was blind -- not blind from birth, but from middle age onward. This collection of his poetry on the subject of night and dreams has particular poignancy as he transitioned from a fully sighted person to a man who saw the penumbra of sightlessness approaching him over the years to a blind man who waited for the ultimate night of death. In all three phases, he wrote poetry; and that poetry in no wise suffered from his inability to see. In old age, he had become like Tiresias in Sophocles' Oedipus plays, both blind and, at the same time, far-seeing.
Here are a couple of brief selections that will give you a sense of his verse:
Here are a couple of brief selections that will give you a sense of his verse:
BoundariesAs long as I live, the words of Borges will continue to haunt me. Although he died a quarter of a century ago, he still lives and will always live. Like a ghost mentor, he still lights the way for me into life, death, literature, and that strange, wonderful world that is Argentina.
There is a line by Verlaine that I will not remember again.
There is a street nearby that is off limits to my feet.
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time.
There is a door I have closed until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I'm looking at them now) are some I will never open.
This summer I will be fifty years old.
Death is using me up, relentlessly.
From: The Gold of the Tigers
All the other overwhelming colors,
in company with the years, kept leaving me,
and now alone remains
the amorphous light, the inextricable shadow
and the gold of the beginning.
O sunsets, O tigers, O wonders
of myth and epic,
O gold more dear to me, gold of your hair
which these hands long to touch.
February 23, 2019
"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."
▫️From 'Limits' by Jorge Luis Borges, translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid
POEMS OF THE NIGHT is an immaculate collection of poetry, gathering many previously published poems in new translation, and some pieces appearing in English for the first time. The Penguin Classics edition I read was a dual text, Spanish and English.
This was my first full-length exposure to Borges, choosing to start with his poetry, and making my way to his short fiction and essays.These poems showcase Borges erudition and broad classical education, allusions to many forms of world literature, culture, language... It was stunning to read.
Darkness, sleep, dreams, blindness, death - these poems are Borges own reckoning with his growing blindness, and his inability to see his beloved words on a page. The natural progression, as he ponders death.
.
"I think of my own death, my perfect death,
without a funeral urn, without a tear."
▫️From 'Elegy'.
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."
▫️From 'Limits' by Jorge Luis Borges, translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid
POEMS OF THE NIGHT is an immaculate collection of poetry, gathering many previously published poems in new translation, and some pieces appearing in English for the first time. The Penguin Classics edition I read was a dual text, Spanish and English.
This was my first full-length exposure to Borges, choosing to start with his poetry, and making my way to his short fiction and essays.These poems showcase Borges erudition and broad classical education, allusions to many forms of world literature, culture, language... It was stunning to read.
Darkness, sleep, dreams, blindness, death - these poems are Borges own reckoning with his growing blindness, and his inability to see his beloved words on a page. The natural progression, as he ponders death.
.
"I think of my own death, my perfect death,
without a funeral urn, without a tear."
▫️From 'Elegy'.
March 5, 2014
Borges is drowning and he's describing the water, so beautifully that it's easy to spend a lot of time with his night poems and gradually dimming world.
The content is bleak, sleep is an escape, dreams are traps and mirrors mock his blindness. Death, ashes, nightmares, a world without ice-cream, well...I don't think there was ice cream.
The language, form and imagery are evocative, there is a patina stolen by the translation/s but that is par for course.
There is much to admire here, much more than I am letting on. Elegance and wisdom. I'm just restless and unwilling to float with the grand themes and gloomy abstractions - I miss the heart, the heat and the sucker punch. I know I'm always going on about that. There are hints of that energy when Borges speaks of his mistress Buenos Aires.
Get the man some chunky monkey.
July 25, 2025
Ahora es un poco de ceniza y de gloria.
"Now he is a handful of dust and glory." That is the final line of the final poem of this Penguin Classics selection of poems by Jorge Luis Borges, "Sepulchral Inscription," of Poems of the Night, as translated by Robert Fitzgerald. (The original Spanish is the headline of this review.) It serves as an epitaph for Borges himself.
I have a new favorite poet. Here is how one of his most famous poems, "Insomnio," begins
I could go on quoting Borges for pages, but I will restrain myself. It's brilliant. Read it!
Blog review.
"Now he is a handful of dust and glory." That is the final line of the final poem of this Penguin Classics selection of poems by Jorge Luis Borges, "Sepulchral Inscription," of Poems of the Night, as translated by Robert Fitzgerald. (The original Spanish is the headline of this review.) It serves as an epitaph for Borges himself.
I have a new favorite poet. Here is how one of his most famous poems, "Insomnio," begins
De fierro,It is, I think, very characteristic of Borges. If you think about it, it is hard to understand. What does it mean to say, "The night must be made of iron"? And yet, if I DON'T think about it, it is completely clear. When I read, "De fierro tiene que ser la noche," I don't ask myself what that means. I KNOW instantly exactly what Borges is saying. (In this Borges contrasts with Rilke. When I think about what Rilke is saying, it is obscure. But it is also obscure if I don't think about it.) I read Borges and think, "Yeah! Inject that stuff right into my brain!"
de encorvados tirantes de enorme fierro tiene que ser la noche,
para que no la revienten y la desfonden
las muchas cosas que mis abarrotados ojos han visto,
las duras cosas que insoportablemente la pueblan.*
I could go on quoting Borges for pages, but I will restrain myself. It's brilliant. Read it!
*Insomnia
Of iron
of bent struts of enormous iron the night must be made
to hold in all the things that have crowded my eyes
all the hard things that try unbearably
to burst her sides and bottom
Blog review.
January 8, 2019
"The night is a long and lonely celebration."
Poems of the Night is a gorgeous book of poetry. There are so many emotions in this collection - grief, loneliness, fear, sadness, acceptance, peace, and so much more. Borges is so talented, and I'm happy that I had to the opportunity to read this collection.
My edition had the original Spanish next to the translated English. I tried going back and forth for a while, but I don't think I'm ready for full-out Spanish poetry yet. I would love to read the original one day, though.
Poems of the Night addressed many of the fears and concerns that I have about death and getting older, and it was nice to feel a little less alone. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who worries about this stuff, and Borges shares his feelings so much more eloquently than I ever could. Although this collection is sad, it made me feel a little bit calmer inside.
Poems of the Night is a gorgeous book of poetry. There are so many emotions in this collection - grief, loneliness, fear, sadness, acceptance, peace, and so much more. Borges is so talented, and I'm happy that I had to the opportunity to read this collection.
My edition had the original Spanish next to the translated English. I tried going back and forth for a while, but I don't think I'm ready for full-out Spanish poetry yet. I would love to read the original one day, though.
Poems of the Night addressed many of the fears and concerns that I have about death and getting older, and it was nice to feel a little less alone. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who worries about this stuff, and Borges shares his feelings so much more eloquently than I ever could. Although this collection is sad, it made me feel a little bit calmer inside.
October 26, 2024
Lovely collection of poems. First time reading poetry. It’s also cool that it’s bilingual. Tight as heck.
October 29, 2025
My friend's copy from high school, given to me before she moved to Portugal. I will give it back to her on her return.
Dreamtelling is a skill, a talent, an art, depending on who is practicing it.
Dreamtelling is a skill, a talent, an art, depending on who is practicing it.
May 20, 2013
A nice review I found (of this text and the other Penguin publication of sonnets) with a few examples of the verse- http://quarterlyconversation.com/poem...
One would be wrong to call Borges 'colourful', but perhaps the word is 'stark' that I'm looking for to describe his poetry. Not in a simple black and white divide either, but a winding, twisting, splitting medley of contrasting images. Along with Beckett, Borges was one of the true innovators in art at the close of Modernism. Unfortunately, the postmodernists on the whole appear unable to appreciate the scope of these writers. There's such a verve, a sense of joy when Borges makes his allusions, but he never gets lost in them and you sense only earnestness and not pretension in even the attempts that aren't perfectly polished.
One would be wrong to call Borges 'colourful', but perhaps the word is 'stark' that I'm looking for to describe his poetry. Not in a simple black and white divide either, but a winding, twisting, splitting medley of contrasting images. Along with Beckett, Borges was one of the true innovators in art at the close of Modernism. Unfortunately, the postmodernists on the whole appear unable to appreciate the scope of these writers. There's such a verve, a sense of joy when Borges makes his allusions, but he never gets lost in them and you sense only earnestness and not pretension in even the attempts that aren't perfectly polished.
December 14, 2010
I think I will always be reading this. It just gets better and better...
August 31, 2014
Always am I in wonder that such depth and so many worlds could populate so few words strung together.
June 3, 2021
Almost a Last Judgment https://whatmoderntimes.com/post/5867...
Boundaries https://www.consolatio.com/2009/01/li...
The Young Night http://www.tanvien.net/new_daily_poet...
Boundaries https://www.consolatio.com/2009/01/li...
The Young Night http://www.tanvien.net/new_daily_poet...
April 22, 2022
Goddamn, this was good.
Goddamn. I was expecting this to be a book that… kinda sucked? Just sucked a little bit. Like I’d heard Borges thought of himself as a poet and was frustrated that he was known as a short story writer, and going in I expected these to be Okay. you know? just like Alright. But goddamn these are good
Goddamn. I was expecting this to be a book that… kinda sucked? Just sucked a little bit. Like I’d heard Borges thought of himself as a poet and was frustrated that he was known as a short story writer, and going in I expected these to be Okay. you know? just like Alright. But goddamn these are good
February 15, 2025
I really wanted to savor this one. Borges has such a beautiful voice. Poems of the Night explores his fascination with the night, dreams, the cycles of life and death, and memory, with the knowledge he is losing his sight. Some favorites- Of Heaven and Hell, Almost a Last Judgement, Elegy for a Park, Midgarthormr, In Praise of Darkness, The Labyrinth, Poems of the Gift. (I could continue....)
October 29, 2023
A collection I was slowly making my way through, and was grateful for the experience. My first time reading Borges and I loved every poem here. Immaculate.
July 23, 2013
Ah, who knew there could be so much beauty in darkness?
For Borges, it seems that the realm of blindness has brought upon an intensified imagination and memory of images, so much so that he often can not differentiate between dreams and reality. Blindness is a constant world of sleep even in a state of consciousness and Borges dwells upon how this ironically conjures insomnia.
He shows us how he grapples with the difficulty of living a life with a handicap that makes everything appear in shadow regardless of whether eyes are open or shut.
Thus, in amongst all his beautiful descriptions we confront short bursts of pain and loneliness. And what is most incredible about such catharsis is that Borges allows for his doubts, fears and uncertainties to be strikingly resonant with the modernist and post-modernist movements of which he is an advocate. Toward the end of the collection, this becomes especially noticeable as Borges is thrust into further debilitation through old age and begins to reflect on death and its meaning to somebody who can no longer make sense of life, to somebody trapped in a never-ending night.
This isn't to say that Borges doesn't also feel somewhat liberated by his blindness. In fact, in his poem 'Mirrors' it becomes apparent that he feels that a man's encounter with his reflection either makes him vain, or full of regret. Reflections are a device through which we are able to see the horror of our own immorality. But without being able to see it, we are blissfully ignorant. Essentially, Borges reveals that sight is a demon just as much as it is a blessing and that blindness works in the same way.
For Borges, it seems that the realm of blindness has brought upon an intensified imagination and memory of images, so much so that he often can not differentiate between dreams and reality. Blindness is a constant world of sleep even in a state of consciousness and Borges dwells upon how this ironically conjures insomnia.
He shows us how he grapples with the difficulty of living a life with a handicap that makes everything appear in shadow regardless of whether eyes are open or shut.
Thus, in amongst all his beautiful descriptions we confront short bursts of pain and loneliness. And what is most incredible about such catharsis is that Borges allows for his doubts, fears and uncertainties to be strikingly resonant with the modernist and post-modernist movements of which he is an advocate. Toward the end of the collection, this becomes especially noticeable as Borges is thrust into further debilitation through old age and begins to reflect on death and its meaning to somebody who can no longer make sense of life, to somebody trapped in a never-ending night.
This isn't to say that Borges doesn't also feel somewhat liberated by his blindness. In fact, in his poem 'Mirrors' it becomes apparent that he feels that a man's encounter with his reflection either makes him vain, or full of regret. Reflections are a device through which we are able to see the horror of our own immorality. But without being able to see it, we are blissfully ignorant. Essentially, Borges reveals that sight is a demon just as much as it is a blessing and that blindness works in the same way.
July 8, 2023
Beautiful writing in both English and Spanish. I could read these poems all day.
"As one returning from a lost meadow I returned from your arms.
As one returning from a country of swords I returned from your tears."
"Today the streets remember
that they were fields one day."
The Suicide
Not a star will remain in the night.
The night itself will not remain.
I will die and with me the sum
Of the intolerable universe.
I’ll erase the pyramids, the coins,
The continents and all the faces.
I’ll erase the accumulated past.
I’ll make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I gaze at the last sunset.
I am listening to the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no-one.
"As one returning from a lost meadow I returned from your arms.
As one returning from a country of swords I returned from your tears."
"Today the streets remember
that they were fields one day."
The Suicide
Not a star will remain in the night.
The night itself will not remain.
I will die and with me the sum
Of the intolerable universe.
I’ll erase the pyramids, the coins,
The continents and all the faces.
I’ll erase the accumulated past.
I’ll make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I gaze at the last sunset.
I am listening to the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no-one.
January 6, 2024
damn there's some good stuff in here. and below are some of my faves from this crepuscular collection!
PATIO
With evening
the two or three colors of the patio grew weary.
The huge candor of the full moon no longer enchants its usual firmament.
Patio: heaven's watercourse.
The patio is the slope
down which the sky flows into the house.
Serenely
eternity waits at the crossway of the stars.
It is lovely to live in the dark friendliness of covered entrance way, arbor, and wellhead.
IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS
Old age (the name that others give it)
can be the time of our greatest bliss.
The animal has died or almost died.
The man and his spirit remain.
I live among vague, luminous shapes
that are not darkness yet.
Buenos Aires,
whose edges disintegrated
into the endless plain,
has gone back to being the Recoleta, the Retiro,
the nondescript streets of the Once,
and the rickety old houses we still call the South.
In my life there were always too many things.
Democritus of Abdera plucked out his eyes in order to think:
Time has been my Democritus.
This penumbra is slow and does not pain me;
it flows down a gentle slope,
resembling eternity.
My friends have no faces,
women are what they were so many years ago,
these corners could be other corners, there are no letters on the pages of books.
All this should frighten me, but it is a sweetness, a return.
Of the generations of texts on earth
I will have read only a few-
the ones that I keep reading in my memory,
reading and transforming.
From South, East, West, and North
the paths converge that have led me
to my secret center.
Those paths were echoes and footsteps,
women, men, death-throes, resurrections, days and nights,
dreams and half-wakeful dreams,
every inmost moment of yesterday
and all the yesterdays of the world,
the Dane's staunch sword and the Persian's moon,
the acts of the dead,
shared love, and words,
Emerson and snow, so many things.
Now I can forget them.
I reach my center,
my algebra and my key,
my mirror.
Soon I will know who I am.
INSCRIPTION ON ANY TOMB
Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence, in many words recalling name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life-the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual
delight—
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen, as you yourself are the mirror and image of those who did not live as long as you and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.
from ALMOST A LAST JUDGEMENT:
Ive fixed my feelings into durable words when they could’ve been spent on tenderness. Water keeps flowing freely in my mouth and poems don’t deny me their music. I feel the terror of beauty; who will dare condemn me when this great moon of my solitude forgives me.
from WHERE CAN THEY HAVE GONE:
Nothing improves a reputation like confinement to a grave.
A SATURDAY
A blind man living in a hollow house Exhausts his certain narrow corridors And puts his hands on the expansive walls And the smooth glass of the interior doors And the rough-textured bindings of the books Forbidden to his love and the unpolished Silver that belonged to his ancestors And the old water spigots and the moldings And one or two stray pennies and the key.
He is alone and no one is in the mirror.
Going or coming. His knuckles graze the border Of the first shelf. Without deciding to He has stretched out on the solitary bed And senses that the acts he executes Interminably in his twilit hour Obey a game he doesn't understand And that an enigmatic god conducts.
In a loud voice he rhythmically repeats
Some fragments from the classics and rehearses
Variations of verbs and epithets
And, good or bad, at last he writes this poem.
SLEEP
The night assigns us its magic task. To unravel the universe, the infinite ramifications of effects and causes, all lost in that bottomless vertigo, time.
Tonight the night wants you to forget your name, your elders and your blood, every human word and every tear,
what you would have learned from staying awake, the illusory point of the geometricians, the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid, the cylinder, the sphere, the sea, the waves, your cheek on the pillow, the coolness of the fresh sheet, gardens, empires, the Caesars and Shakespeare and the hardest thing of all, what you love.
Oddly enough, a pill can erase the cosmos and erect chaos.
THE LIMIT (La Cifra)
The silent friendship of the moon (I misquote Virgil) has kept you company since that one night or evening now lost in time, when your restless eyes first made her out for always in a patio or a garden since gone to dust.
For always? I know that someday someone will find a way of telling you this truth:
"You'll never see the moon aglow again.
You've now attained the limit set for you by destiny. No use opening every window throughout the world. Too late. You'll never find her.
Our life is spent discovering and forgetting that gentle habit of the night.
Take a good look. It could be the last.
PATIO
With evening
the two or three colors of the patio grew weary.
The huge candor of the full moon no longer enchants its usual firmament.
Patio: heaven's watercourse.
The patio is the slope
down which the sky flows into the house.
Serenely
eternity waits at the crossway of the stars.
It is lovely to live in the dark friendliness of covered entrance way, arbor, and wellhead.
IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS
Old age (the name that others give it)
can be the time of our greatest bliss.
The animal has died or almost died.
The man and his spirit remain.
I live among vague, luminous shapes
that are not darkness yet.
Buenos Aires,
whose edges disintegrated
into the endless plain,
has gone back to being the Recoleta, the Retiro,
the nondescript streets of the Once,
and the rickety old houses we still call the South.
In my life there were always too many things.
Democritus of Abdera plucked out his eyes in order to think:
Time has been my Democritus.
This penumbra is slow and does not pain me;
it flows down a gentle slope,
resembling eternity.
My friends have no faces,
women are what they were so many years ago,
these corners could be other corners, there are no letters on the pages of books.
All this should frighten me, but it is a sweetness, a return.
Of the generations of texts on earth
I will have read only a few-
the ones that I keep reading in my memory,
reading and transforming.
From South, East, West, and North
the paths converge that have led me
to my secret center.
Those paths were echoes and footsteps,
women, men, death-throes, resurrections, days and nights,
dreams and half-wakeful dreams,
every inmost moment of yesterday
and all the yesterdays of the world,
the Dane's staunch sword and the Persian's moon,
the acts of the dead,
shared love, and words,
Emerson and snow, so many things.
Now I can forget them.
I reach my center,
my algebra and my key,
my mirror.
Soon I will know who I am.
INSCRIPTION ON ANY TOMB
Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence, in many words recalling name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life-the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual
delight—
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen, as you yourself are the mirror and image of those who did not live as long as you and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.
from ALMOST A LAST JUDGEMENT:
Ive fixed my feelings into durable words when they could’ve been spent on tenderness. Water keeps flowing freely in my mouth and poems don’t deny me their music. I feel the terror of beauty; who will dare condemn me when this great moon of my solitude forgives me.
from WHERE CAN THEY HAVE GONE:
Nothing improves a reputation like confinement to a grave.
A SATURDAY
A blind man living in a hollow house Exhausts his certain narrow corridors And puts his hands on the expansive walls And the smooth glass of the interior doors And the rough-textured bindings of the books Forbidden to his love and the unpolished Silver that belonged to his ancestors And the old water spigots and the moldings And one or two stray pennies and the key.
He is alone and no one is in the mirror.
Going or coming. His knuckles graze the border Of the first shelf. Without deciding to He has stretched out on the solitary bed And senses that the acts he executes Interminably in his twilit hour Obey a game he doesn't understand And that an enigmatic god conducts.
In a loud voice he rhythmically repeats
Some fragments from the classics and rehearses
Variations of verbs and epithets
And, good or bad, at last he writes this poem.
SLEEP
The night assigns us its magic task. To unravel the universe, the infinite ramifications of effects and causes, all lost in that bottomless vertigo, time.
Tonight the night wants you to forget your name, your elders and your blood, every human word and every tear,
what you would have learned from staying awake, the illusory point of the geometricians, the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid, the cylinder, the sphere, the sea, the waves, your cheek on the pillow, the coolness of the fresh sheet, gardens, empires, the Caesars and Shakespeare and the hardest thing of all, what you love.
Oddly enough, a pill can erase the cosmos and erect chaos.
THE LIMIT (La Cifra)
The silent friendship of the moon (I misquote Virgil) has kept you company since that one night or evening now lost in time, when your restless eyes first made her out for always in a patio or a garden since gone to dust.
For always? I know that someday someone will find a way of telling you this truth:
"You'll never see the moon aglow again.
You've now attained the limit set for you by destiny. No use opening every window throughout the world. Too late. You'll never find her.
Our life is spent discovering and forgetting that gentle habit of the night.
Take a good look. It could be the last.
August 5, 2014
Every poem was beautiful. Every poem was a revelation. Borges romanticizes insomnia and the blind and the dust we are all destined to become. He will make you fall in love with not seeing, not knowing and not caring that you don't know. His poetry is one endless love song and one endless night.
Everybody should read this.
Everybody should read this.
December 5, 2019
5/5
i was completely blown away by this collection. part of it is my love for the themes covered in it: death, dreams, loss, memory, etc.—poetry about that stuff, if done well, often goes straight to my heart, and the poems in this collection are done SO DAMN WELL. also last month i made my poetry writing theme for december "dreamscapes" and i've been writing a ton of dream related poetry so reading this was really fun in that respect, though i could only dream (haha...) of writing about dreams as well as borges does. the way he writes about the loss of sight is fucking EXQUISITE. so many poems in here were, honestly i was not prepared & i need to pick up some of his other work ASAP.
some of my favorite poems:
- The Forging
- Break of Day
- Street With A Pink Corner Store
- A Leavetaking
- Remorse for Any Death (!!!)
- Deathwatch on the Southside (!!!)
- Almost a Last Judgment
- Insomnia
- Poem of the Gifts
- Ars Poetica
- Mirrors
- Limits (!!!)
- Someone
- In Praise of Darkness
- Ein Traum
- I Am Not Even Dust
- A Saturday
- The Young Night (!!!)
- Dreams (!!!)
- Someone Will Dream
- A Nightmare (!!!)
- Doomsday (!!!)
- Haiku (!!!)
- The Limit (!!!)
- Milonga of The Dead Man
"There is a line by Verlaine that I will not remember again.
There is a street nearby that is off limits to my feet.
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time.
There is a door I have closed until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I'm looking at them now)
are some I will never open.
This summer I will be fifty years old.
Death is using me up, relentlessly."
–Museum (Boundaries)
"Not a single star will be left in the night.
The night will not be left.
I will die, and with me,
the weight of the intolerable universe.
I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions,
the continents and faces.
I shall erase the accumulated past.
I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I am looking on the final sunset.
I am hearing the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no one."
—The Suicide
"What is insomnia?
The question is rhetorical. I know the answer only too well. It is to count off and dread in the small hours the fateful harsh strokes of the chime. It is attempting with ineffectual magic to breathe smoothly. It is the burden of a body that abruptly shifts sides. It is shutting the eyelids down tight. It is a state like fever and is assuredly not watchfulness. It is saying over bits of paragraphs read years and years before. It is knowing how guilty you are to be lying awake when others are asleep. It is trying to sink into slumber and being unable to sink into slumber. It is the horror of being and going on being. It is the dubious daybreak.
What is longevity? It is the horror of existing in a human body whose faculties are in decline. It is insomnia measured by decades and not by metal hands. It is carrying the weight of seas and pyramids, of ancient libraries and dynasties, of the dawns that Adam saw. It is being well aware that I am bound to my flesh, to a voice I detest, to my name, to routinely remembering, to Castilian, over which I have no control, to feeling nostalgic for the Latin I do not know. It is trying to sink into death and being unable to sink into death. It is being and continuing to be."
—Two Forms of Insomnia
"To wake someone from sleep
is a common day-to-day act
that can set us trembling.
To wake someone from sleep
is to saddle some other with the interminable
prison of the universe
of his time, with neither sunset nor dawn.
It is to show him he is someone or something
subject to a name that lays claim to him
and an accumulation of yesterdays.
It is to trouble his eternity,
to load him down with centuries and stars,
to restore time another Lazurus
burdened with memory.
It is to desecrate the waters of Lethe."
—Reverse
"The night assigns us its magic
task. To unravel the unverse,
the infinite ramifacations
of effects and causes, all lost
in that bottomless vertigo, time.
Tonight the night wants you to forget
your name, your elders and your blood,
every human word and every tear,
what you would have learned from staying awake,
the illusory point of the geometricians,
the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid,
the cylinder, the sphere the sea, the waves,
your cheek on the pillow, the coolness
of the fresh sheet, gardens,
empires, the Ceasers and Shakespeare
and the hardest thing of all, what you love.
Oddly enough, a pill can
erase the cosmos and erect chaos."
—Sleep
i was completely blown away by this collection. part of it is my love for the themes covered in it: death, dreams, loss, memory, etc.—poetry about that stuff, if done well, often goes straight to my heart, and the poems in this collection are done SO DAMN WELL. also last month i made my poetry writing theme for december "dreamscapes" and i've been writing a ton of dream related poetry so reading this was really fun in that respect, though i could only dream (haha...) of writing about dreams as well as borges does. the way he writes about the loss of sight is fucking EXQUISITE. so many poems in here were, honestly i was not prepared & i need to pick up some of his other work ASAP.
some of my favorite poems:
- The Forging
- Break of Day
- Street With A Pink Corner Store
- A Leavetaking
- Remorse for Any Death (!!!)
- Deathwatch on the Southside (!!!)
- Almost a Last Judgment
- Insomnia
- Poem of the Gifts
- Ars Poetica
- Mirrors
- Limits (!!!)
- Someone
- In Praise of Darkness
- Ein Traum
- I Am Not Even Dust
- A Saturday
- The Young Night (!!!)
- Dreams (!!!)
- Someone Will Dream
- A Nightmare (!!!)
- Doomsday (!!!)
- Haiku (!!!)
- The Limit (!!!)
- Milonga of The Dead Man
"There is a line by Verlaine that I will not remember again.
There is a street nearby that is off limits to my feet.
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time.
There is a door I have closed until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I'm looking at them now)
are some I will never open.
This summer I will be fifty years old.
Death is using me up, relentlessly."
–Museum (Boundaries)
"Not a single star will be left in the night.
The night will not be left.
I will die, and with me,
the weight of the intolerable universe.
I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions,
the continents and faces.
I shall erase the accumulated past.
I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I am looking on the final sunset.
I am hearing the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no one."
—The Suicide
"What is insomnia?
The question is rhetorical. I know the answer only too well. It is to count off and dread in the small hours the fateful harsh strokes of the chime. It is attempting with ineffectual magic to breathe smoothly. It is the burden of a body that abruptly shifts sides. It is shutting the eyelids down tight. It is a state like fever and is assuredly not watchfulness. It is saying over bits of paragraphs read years and years before. It is knowing how guilty you are to be lying awake when others are asleep. It is trying to sink into slumber and being unable to sink into slumber. It is the horror of being and going on being. It is the dubious daybreak.
What is longevity? It is the horror of existing in a human body whose faculties are in decline. It is insomnia measured by decades and not by metal hands. It is carrying the weight of seas and pyramids, of ancient libraries and dynasties, of the dawns that Adam saw. It is being well aware that I am bound to my flesh, to a voice I detest, to my name, to routinely remembering, to Castilian, over which I have no control, to feeling nostalgic for the Latin I do not know. It is trying to sink into death and being unable to sink into death. It is being and continuing to be."
—Two Forms of Insomnia
"To wake someone from sleep
is a common day-to-day act
that can set us trembling.
To wake someone from sleep
is to saddle some other with the interminable
prison of the universe
of his time, with neither sunset nor dawn.
It is to show him he is someone or something
subject to a name that lays claim to him
and an accumulation of yesterdays.
It is to trouble his eternity,
to load him down with centuries and stars,
to restore time another Lazurus
burdened with memory.
It is to desecrate the waters of Lethe."
—Reverse
"The night assigns us its magic
task. To unravel the unverse,
the infinite ramifacations
of effects and causes, all lost
in that bottomless vertigo, time.
Tonight the night wants you to forget
your name, your elders and your blood,
every human word and every tear,
what you would have learned from staying awake,
the illusory point of the geometricians,
the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid,
the cylinder, the sphere the sea, the waves,
your cheek on the pillow, the coolness
of the fresh sheet, gardens,
empires, the Ceasers and Shakespeare
and the hardest thing of all, what you love.
Oddly enough, a pill can
erase the cosmos and erect chaos."
—Sleep
January 30, 2025
THE FORGING
Like the blind man whose hands are precursors
that push aside walls and glimpse heavens
slowly, flustered, I feel
in the crack of night
the verses that are to come.
I must burn the abominable darkness
in their limpid bonfire:
the purple of words
on the flagellated shoulder of time.
I must enclose the tears of evening
in the hard diamond of the poem.
No matter if the soul
walks naked and lonely as the wind
if the universe of a glorious kiss
still embraces my life.
The night is good fertile ground
for a sower of verses.
🌀🌀🌀
ARS POETICA
To look at the river made of time and water
And remember that time is another river
To know that we are lost like the river
And that faces dissolve like water.
To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep
While it is another dream, and that the death
That our flesh goes in fear of is that death
Which comes every night and is called sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of the days of man and of his years,
To transmute the outrage of the years
Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol,
To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold-such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the evenings a face
Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror;
Art should be like that mirror
Which reveals to us our own face.
They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels,
Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca,
Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of marvels.
It is also like the river with no end
That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And is another, like the river with no end.
🌀🌀🌀
ST. JOHN'S EVE
The setting sun, with implacable splendor,
parted the distances on its blade.
And night is here, tender as a willow.
Whorls of brusque bonfires
Splutter into red:
wood offered in sacrifice
bleeds into the high flames:
living flag, blind mischief.
The darkness is as gentle as someplace far away.
Today the streets remember
that they were fields one day.
And through the holy night,
Solitude says its rosary of far flung stars.
🌀🌀🌀
from GENERAL QUIROGA RIDES TO HIS DEATH IN A CARRIAGE
Now dead, now on his feet, now immortal, now a ghost,
he reported to the Hell marked out for him by God,
and under his command there marched, broken and bloodless,
the souls in purgatory of his soldiers and his horses.
Like the blind man whose hands are precursors
that push aside walls and glimpse heavens
slowly, flustered, I feel
in the crack of night
the verses that are to come.
I must burn the abominable darkness
in their limpid bonfire:
the purple of words
on the flagellated shoulder of time.
I must enclose the tears of evening
in the hard diamond of the poem.
No matter if the soul
walks naked and lonely as the wind
if the universe of a glorious kiss
still embraces my life.
The night is good fertile ground
for a sower of verses.
🌀🌀🌀
ARS POETICA
To look at the river made of time and water
And remember that time is another river
To know that we are lost like the river
And that faces dissolve like water.
To be aware that waking dreams it is not asleep
While it is another dream, and that the death
That our flesh goes in fear of is that death
Which comes every night and is called sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of the days of man and of his years,
To transmute the outrage of the years
Into a music, a murmur of voices, and a symbol,
To see in death sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold-such is poetry,
Which is immortal and poor. Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the evenings a face
Looks at us out of the depths of a mirror;
Art should be like that mirror
Which reveals to us our own face.
They say that Ulysses, sated with marvels,
Wept tears of love at the sight of his Ithaca,
Green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of marvels.
It is also like the river with no end
That flows and remains and is the mirror of one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And is another, like the river with no end.
🌀🌀🌀
ST. JOHN'S EVE
The setting sun, with implacable splendor,
parted the distances on its blade.
And night is here, tender as a willow.
Whorls of brusque bonfires
Splutter into red:
wood offered in sacrifice
bleeds into the high flames:
living flag, blind mischief.
The darkness is as gentle as someplace far away.
Today the streets remember
that they were fields one day.
And through the holy night,
Solitude says its rosary of far flung stars.
🌀🌀🌀
from GENERAL QUIROGA RIDES TO HIS DEATH IN A CARRIAGE
Now dead, now on his feet, now immortal, now a ghost,
he reported to the Hell marked out for him by God,
and under his command there marched, broken and bloodless,
the souls in purgatory of his soldiers and his horses.
January 31, 2022
Borges is one of the greatest poets of the Americas, the most well known poet of Argentina. He was the head librarian of the national library and extremely erudite, extremely well read and well educated. He also had a genetic issue that led to his slow, but inevitable blindness. Poems of the Night addresses all of these elements -- his love for his home, Buenos Aires, his street, the corner shop; his position as head librarian; and a good majority of his poems reflect his erudition. There are references not just to Greek and Roman mythology, but to Norse mythology as well; to the Divine Comedy and specific paintings, to historical figures and obscure saints. One is well advised to have access to Google while reading these poems to fully appreciate them (unless one is confident in one's familiarity with the classics).
Poems of the Night is a dual language collection of poems with translations by several different English language poets. This has strengths and weaknesses. The translations are different in tone and style between the different translators -- I found I preferred some translators' style more than others. Also, because the Spanish is provided, if one is familiar with the language, one can check the translation for oneself. There are some translations that are truer to the Spanish and some that seem to be much freer with the translation. This in and of itself can be interesting. None of the translations are so bad as to do an injustice to Borges, these are really minor, translator-ish points.
The collection is divided into three sections, the poems in each section chosen from published books and each section dealing with themes of night, blindness, sight, dreams -- what is real, what is a dream. He also has poems in which he asks questions, the eternal questions about God and man, nature and essence. In his poem "Golem," he talks about what is in a name and by naming something does man control it, and what is it to control something after all. The Jews did not name God, God could not be named because God could not be known, but man names everything in the garden of Eden, in naming the Golem, the Golem comes to life; but what kind of life does the Golem have? As the rabbi feels pity on his creation, does God have pity on his creation? Meanwhile, Shakespeare and Aquinas make an appearance.
Poems of the Night is a dual language collection of poems with translations by several different English language poets. This has strengths and weaknesses. The translations are different in tone and style between the different translators -- I found I preferred some translators' style more than others. Also, because the Spanish is provided, if one is familiar with the language, one can check the translation for oneself. There are some translations that are truer to the Spanish and some that seem to be much freer with the translation. This in and of itself can be interesting. None of the translations are so bad as to do an injustice to Borges, these are really minor, translator-ish points.
The collection is divided into three sections, the poems in each section chosen from published books and each section dealing with themes of night, blindness, sight, dreams -- what is real, what is a dream. He also has poems in which he asks questions, the eternal questions about God and man, nature and essence. In his poem "Golem," he talks about what is in a name and by naming something does man control it, and what is it to control something after all. The Jews did not name God, God could not be named because God could not be known, but man names everything in the garden of Eden, in naming the Golem, the Golem comes to life; but what kind of life does the Golem have? As the rabbi feels pity on his creation, does God have pity on his creation? Meanwhile, Shakespeare and Aquinas make an appearance.
March 26, 2019
My breath was absolutely taken away from me during so many of the pieces of poetry in this collection from Borges. Borges, who lost his sight in the fifty-fifth year of his life never lost his love for the things he wished and wanted to so badly see again; gardens, his beautiful city of Buenos Aires and his, all of our, beloved moon. I so badly feel for him, for the pain in the lyrics of his words. The truth echoing in his nightmares that he will forever circle himself again and again; lost in the faces of all the people who have ever made him into who he is; all the faces the same as his; all the while all he sees is dark nothing, echoing, hollow darkness. His labyrinth was his own making, circling and circling in the depths of his own psyche without eyes to navigate. I have never so badly wished to give my eyes to another for a day just to hear his thoughts. A gift for a gift.
July 6, 2024
The night assigns us its magic
task. To unravel the universe,
the infinite ramifications
of effects and causes, all lost
in that bottomless vertigo, time.
Tonight the night wants you to forget
your name, your elders and your blood,
every human word and every tear,
what you would have learned from staying awake,
the illusory point of the geometricians,
the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid,
the cylinder, the sphere, the sea, the waves,
your cheek on the pillow, the coolness
of the fresh sheet, gardens,
empires, the Caesars and Shakespeare
and the hardest thing of all, what you love.
Oddly enough, a pill can
erase the cosmos and erect chaos.
Sleep (Translated by Stephen Kessler)
task. To unravel the universe,
the infinite ramifications
of effects and causes, all lost
in that bottomless vertigo, time.
Tonight the night wants you to forget
your name, your elders and your blood,
every human word and every tear,
what you would have learned from staying awake,
the illusory point of the geometricians,
the line, the plane, the cube, the pyramid,
the cylinder, the sphere, the sea, the waves,
your cheek on the pillow, the coolness
of the fresh sheet, gardens,
empires, the Caesars and Shakespeare
and the hardest thing of all, what you love.
Oddly enough, a pill can
erase the cosmos and erect chaos.
Sleep (Translated by Stephen Kessler)
October 15, 2017
"There is no moment that isn't a load gun."
This powerful collection was my introduction to Borges. There were some poems that were so impactful that I uttered words aloud when they were done (I actually said "damn!" or "wow" multiple times), others I shared immediately with a friend. There's a power in these meditations on darkness, dreams, and mortality. I am looking forward to reading more of Borges work.
This powerful collection was my introduction to Borges. There were some poems that were so impactful that I uttered words aloud when they were done (I actually said "damn!" or "wow" multiple times), others I shared immediately with a friend. There's a power in these meditations on darkness, dreams, and mortality. I am looking forward to reading more of Borges work.
Read
December 15, 2021Borges is best known for his short stories, which seem timeless. "Poems of the Night" is a selection of his poems. I'm fascinated by the man's ability to write about the night, dreams very on nightmares, and death in a way that makes these timeless topics seem as if they may have been written in current times. This book showcases his poems in Spanish and then the English translation is given, which is the reason I wanted to read it. Among the translators are W.S. Merwin and Alastair Reid.
August 21, 2021
Chris gave me this and it was one of the most wonderful things to have received. I hadn't hears of this poet before, but some of these translations from Spanish even rhyme! and his words and thoughts are brilliant and soul-touching and soul-crushing. He wrote as he turned blind and we saw the world clearer from a man who could eventually only see darkness. I'll need to re-read this.
December 6, 2024
This took me a long time to finish (via Audible). I don’t speak Spanish but I know a little to read. I found myself trying to figure out the Spanish and then listening to the English and comparing my understanding. As a result, I am not sure that I really got full appreciation of the poetry in translation.
April 18, 2023
La escritura de jorge luis Borges de ayuda a cuestionarte en todos los sentidos del mundo. Me ayudo a cuestionarme me versión de la noche, mis pensamientos en la noche. Más melancólico más sentimiento. Bellísimo libro y poemas espectaculares. Justo lo que necesitaba leer
August 16, 2023
A masterclass in poetry; philosophical, metaphysical, profound, visions of the night elucidated by a master of his craft. For many reasons one of my favorite collections of poetry I have ever read. Wise beyond words, Borges is quite clearly a mythical creature of the form.
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