| Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986) |
EXILE KINGS Productions
EXILE KINGS Productions
THE EXILE
Someone makes tracks along the paths of Ithaca
and has forgotten his king, who was at Troy
so many years ago;
someone is thinking of his new-won lands,
his new plough and his son,
and is happy, in the main.
Within confines of the globe, myself, Ulysses,
descended deep into the Hall of Hades
and saw the shade of Tiresius of Thebes
who unlocked the love of serpents
and the shade of Hercules
who kills the shades of lions on the plain
and at the same time occupies Olympus.
Someone today walks streets - Chile, Bolivar -
perhaps happy, perhaps not.
I wish I could be he.
1977
TO THE SON
I was not I who begot you. It was the dead -
my father, and his father, and their forebears,
all those who through labyrinth of loves
descend from Adam and the desert wastes
of Cain and Abel, in a dawn so ancient
it has become mythology by now,
to arrive, blood and marrow, at this day
in the future, in witch I beget you.
I feel their multitudes. They are who we are,
and you among us, you and the sons to come
that you will beget. The latest in the line
and in red Adam's line. I too am those others.
Eternity is present in things
of time and its impatient happenings.
Translated by Alastair Reid
Someone makes tracks along the paths of Ithaca
and has forgotten his king, who was at Troy
so many years ago;
someone is thinking of his new-won lands,
his new plough and his son,
and is happy, in the main.
Within confines of the globe, myself, Ulysses,
descended deep into the Hall of Hades
and saw the shade of Tiresius of Thebes
who unlocked the love of serpents
and the shade of Hercules
who kills the shades of lions on the plain
and at the same time occupies Olympus.
Someone today walks streets - Chile, Bolivar -
perhaps happy, perhaps not.
I wish I could be he.
1977
TO THE SON
I was not I who begot you. It was the dead -
my father, and his father, and their forebears,
all those who through labyrinth of loves
descend from Adam and the desert wastes
of Cain and Abel, in a dawn so ancient
it has become mythology by now,
to arrive, blood and marrow, at this day
in the future, in witch I beget you.
I feel their multitudes. They are who we are,
and you among us, you and the sons to come
that you will beget. The latest in the line
and in red Adam's line. I too am those others.
Eternity is present in things
of time and its impatient happenings.
Translated by Alastair Reid