Borges: Ewigkeit (From Spanish)


Ewigkeit
Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Let Spanish verse turn on my tongue, affirm
Once more in me what it has always said
Since Seneca in Latin: that true dread
Sentence that all is fodder for the worm.
Let it turn back with song to hail pale ashes,
Death's calends and the final victory
Of that word-ruler queen whose footfall smashes
The banners of our empty vanity.

Not that. I'll cravenly deny not one

Thing that has blessed my clay. I know of all
Things, one does not exist: oblivion.
That in eternity beyond recall 
The precious things I've lost stay burning on:
That forge, that risen moon, that evening-fall.

Audio of me reading this poem in Spanish


The Original:

Ewigkeit
Jorge Luis Borges

Torne en mi boca el verso castellano
a decir lo que siempre está diciendo
desde el latín de Séneca: el horrendo
dictamen de que todo es del gusano.
Torne a cantar la pálida ceniza,
los fastos de la muerte y la victoria
de esa reina retórica que pisa
los estandartes de la vanagloria.

No así. Lo que mi barro ha bendecido
no lo voy a negar como un cobarde.
Sé que una cosa no hay. Es el olvido;
sé que en la eternidad perdura y arde
lo mucho y lo precioso que he perdido:
esa fragua, esa luna y esa tarde.


2 comments:

  1. "preciso" means precise, exact, particular but not precious. 

    I know than in eternity lie and burn,
    the many, the precise things that I have lost. 

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks. It should have read "precioso."

    ReplyDelete