Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Heraclitus
Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Frick
Second twilight.
Night that deepens into dream.
Purification, forgetfulness.
First twilight.
Morning that once was dawn.
Day that was morning.
Overflowing day that will be a spent evening.
Second twilight.
Night, the other costume of time.
Purification, forgetfulness.
First twilight…
In the dawn, the secret anguish
of the Ephesian.
What weave is this
of will be, is, and was?
What river
lies under the Ganges?
What river has no source?
What river
drags along mythologies and swords?
Sleeping is useless.
Through the dream, through the desert,
through the cellar,
the river carries me, and I am the river.
I was made of delicate substance, mysterious time.
Perhaps the source is within me.
Perhaps the days emerge,
fatal and illusory,
from my shadow.
Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires on August 24, 1899. He died on June 14, 1986 in Geneva—where, he wrote, he had felt “mysteriously happy”—and is buried in the Cemetery of Kings there. (updated 7/2009)
“A Master in Montreal: A 1968 Interview with Jorge Luis Borges” by Don Bell appeared in AGNI 52.
Thomas Frick wrote much of The Iron Boys as a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. He is working on a second novel and on a book-length philosophical investigation. He is co-director of publications at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (updated 11/2006)