I

Translated from the Spanish of Jorge Luis Borges

The skull, the heart well hidden,
the courses of the blood I cannot see,
that Proteus, the labyrinth of dream,
the viscera, the nape, the skeleton.
I am all of those. Incredibly
I am as well the memory of a blade,
of a solitary sun in the west arrayed
in falling gold, in violet shades, in nothing.
I am the one who sees the prows from port;
I am the last few books, the last engravings
nullified by time; I am the one who envies
the ones who have died. Even stranger
to be the man who loops and braids
words on a page in a room inside a house.

Translated by Terese Coe