The Thing I Am (Translator)
I have forgotten my name. I am not Borges
(Borges died at La Verde, under fire)
Nor am I Acevedo, dreaming of battle,
I have forgotten my name. I am not Borges
(Borges died at La Verde, under fire)
Nor am I Acevedo, dreaming of battle,
Thousands upon thousands of grains of sand,
Rivers that know no rest, the sparkling white
Snowflake more delicate than a shadow, light
The story is always the same story,
With every step retraced;
They tell the story in Buenos Aires
I might have been a martyr. Instead I was
A scourge of martyrs, trying souls in fire.
To save my own soul, I tried tears and prayer,
There is so much lonliness in that gold.
The moon of every night is not the moon
That the first Adam saw.
Walking a long time in the fields of the dead
I stopped where the grass
flared thickly, and leaned on a stone
Yesterday rain fell in torrents,
stripping the branches of leaves and
deepening the arroyo. Now,
The time of year when all my blood is thick,
This is the season when my heart must die.
Shortly before the noon is always high—
In the environs of the funeral home
The smell of death was absent. All I knew
Were flowers rioting and odors blown