AN UNFINISHED TALE BY BORGES*

 
     
                             O Domine, suavitas omnis dulcedinis
                             posuisti in libertate mea, ut sim, si
                             voluero mei ipsius.**   – Nicolaus Cusanus

 
This tale depicts a young man named Borges,
terminally ill, slowly going blind, unable to
decide how to spend his last day.  Should
he go outside before the sun goes down,
and lie in the sweet grass one more time,
and gaze up at clouds, passing slowly
across the face of the sky?  Or should he
open the book he’s been meaning to read
(the green volume, waiting so patiently
there by his bed)?  He begins to read.
The tale depicts a young man named
Borges, lying on his deathbed, unable to
decide whether to go outside, or continue
reading.  Finally, the young man sets
aside his book, unfinished.  The light is
going dim, golden.  Trees are murmuring.
Soft air moves the curtains by the open
hospital window, next to his bed.  Borges’
eyes are tired; he can no longer see... so
he shifts himself, slowly, aching, from bed
to wheelchair, forces the wheels to turn,
and rolls (wobbling, slowly) toward the door


 
 
 
* In the Spring 1943 issue of the Buenos Aires literary quarterly Jovanista,
a letter, purportedly written by J.L. Borges, signed “Julio Ciego”, referred
sarcastically to an unwritten (oral?) Borges parody, titled “An Unfinished
Tale by Borges,” performed one evening at the popular Café Manana by 
the poet Ricardo Cesped. 

 
** O Lord, the sweetness of all sweetness, you have given me freedom
to belong to myself, if I will.