Let no one fear in the bewildering night
that I will lose my way among the borders
of dusky flowers that weave a cloth of symbols
appropriate to old nostalgic loves
or the sloth of afternoons– the hidden bird
forever whittling the same thin song,
the circular fountain and the summerhouse,
the indistinct statue and the hazy ruin.
Hollow in the hollow shade, the coach-house
marks (I know well) the insubstantial edges
of this particular world of dust and jasmine
so dear to Julio Herrara and Verlaine.
The shade is thick with the medicinal smell
of the eucalyptus trees, that ancient balm
which, beyond time and ambiguities
of language, brings back vanished country houses.
My step feels out and finds the anticipated
threshold. Its darkened limit is defined
by the roof, and in the chessboard patio
the water tap drips intermittently.
On the far side of the doorways they are sleeping,
those who through the medium of dreams
watch over in the visionary shadows
all that vast yesterday and all dead things.
Each object in this venerable building
I know by heart– the flaking layers of mica
on that gray stone, reflected endlessly
in the recesses of a faded mirror,
and the lion head that holds an iron ring
in its mouth, and the multicolored window glass,
revealing to a child the early vision
of one world colored red, another green.
Far beyond accident and death itself
they endure, each one with its particular story,
but all this happens in the strangeness of
that fourth dimension which is memory.
In it and it alone do they exist,
the gardens and the patios. The past
retains them in that circular preserve
which at one time embraces dawn and dusk.
How could I have forgotten that precise
order of things both humble and beloved ,
today as inaccessible as the roses
revealed to the first Adam in Paradise?
The ancient aura of an elegy
still haunts me when I think about that house–
I do not understand how time can pass,
I, who am time and blood and agony.
*Adrogué on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires, was a summer refuge for the Borges family for a number of years.
translated by Alastair Reid
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