Jorge Luis Borges

Argentine poet, short story writer, essayist.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a share past.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

We are our memories, this chimerical museum of inconstant shapes, this pile of broken mirrors.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

You learn (translation by Veronica A. Shoffstall)

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

After a while you learn the subtle difference/ between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

and you learn that love doesn't mean leaning/ and company doesn't mean security.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts/ and presents aren't promises,

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

and you begin to accept your defeats/ with your head up and your eyes open/ with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

and you learn to build all your roads on today/

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans/ and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

After a while you learn.../ that even sunshine burns if you get too much.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,/ instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

And you learn that you really can endure.../ that you really are strong/ and you really do have worth.../ and you learn and learn.../

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

with every good-bye you learn.

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

Which of the two is now writing this poem/ of a plural I and of a single shadow?

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

How important is the word that names me/ if the anathema is one and indivisible?

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

One of the schools in Tlön has reached the point of denying time.
It reasons that the present is undefined,

[Jorge Luis Borges @Jorge_L_Borges]

that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that the past is no more than present memory.