The Floating Library

The wheeling of the stars is not infinite And the tiger is one of the forms that return, But we, remote from chance of hazard, Believed we were exiled in a time outworn, Time when nothing can happen. The universe, the tragic universe, was not here And maybe should be looked for somewhere else; I [...]

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Without lament or anger time will nick The most heroic swords. Poor and in sorrow, You came home to a land turned from tomorrow, O captain, came to die within her, sick, And with her. In the magic desert-wastes The flower of Portugal was lost and died, And the harsh Spaniard, hitherto subdued, Was menacing [...]

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I know little — or nothing — of my own forebears; The Borges back in Portugal; vague folk That in my flesh, obscurely, still evoke Their customs, and their firmnesses and fears. As slight as if they’d never lived in the sun And free from any trafficking with art, They form an indecipherable part Of [...]

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I leave him on his horse, and in the gray And twilit hour he fixed with death for a meeting; Of all the hours that shaped his human day May this last long, though bitter and defeating. The whiteness of his horse and poncho over The plain advances. Setting sights again To the hollow rifles [...]

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Nothing. Only Muraña’s knife. Only in the gray afternoon the story cut short. I don’t know why in the afternoons I’m companioned By this assassin that I’ve never seen. Palermo was further down. The yellow Thick wall of the jail dominated Suburb and mud flat. Through this savage District went the sordid knife. The knife. [...]

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You walk the Castile countryside As if you hardly saw that it was there. A tricky verse of John’s your only care, You scarcely notice that the sun has died In a yellow glow. The light diffuses, trembles, And on the borders of the East there spreads That moon of mockery which most resembles The [...]

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The battlements of Mars no longer yield To him whom choiring angels now inspire; And from another light (and age) entire Those eyes look down that viewed the battlefield. Your hand is on the metal of your sword. And through the green shires war stalks on his way; They wait beyond that gloom with England still, [...]

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The afternoon grows light because at last Abruptly a minutely shredded rain Is falling, or it fell. For once again Rain is something happening in the past. Whoever hears it fall has brought to mind Time when by a sudden lucky chance A flower called “rose” was open to his glance And the curious color [...]

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All things she possessed and slowly All things left her. We have seen her Armed with loveliness. The morning And the strenuous midday showed her, At her summit, the handsome kingdoms Of the earth. The afternoon was clouding them. The friendly stars (the infinite And ubiquitous mesh of causes) granted her That wealth which annuls [...]

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I In their grave corner, the players Deploy the slow pieces. And the chessboard Detains them until dawn in its severe Compass in which two colors hate each other. Within it the shapes give off a magic Strength: Homeric tower, and nimble Horse, a fighting queen, a backward king, A bishop on the bias, and [...]

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It is well that time can be measured With the harsh shadow a column in summer Casts, or the water of that river In which Heraclitus saw our folly, Since both to time and destiny The two seem alike: the unweighable daytime Shadow, and the irrevocable course Of water following its own path. It is [...]

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