Esa Cara Que Un Sueño Nos Devuelve

alexwh
Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges
2 min readSep 18, 2015
Photograph — Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Shinto Jorge Luís Borges

Cuando nos anonada la desdicha,

durante un segundo nos salvan

las aventuras ínfimas

de la atención o de la memoria:

el sabor de una fruta, el sabor del agua,

esa cara que un sueño nos devuelve,

los primeros jazmines de noviembre,

el anhelo infinito de la brújula,

un libro que creíamos perdido,

el pulso de un hexámetro,

la breve llave que nos abre una casa,

el olor de una biblioteca o del sándalo,

el nombre antiguo de una calle,

los colores de un mapa,

una etimología imprevista,

la lisura de la uña limada,

la fecha que buscábamos,

contar las doce campanadas oscuras,

un brusco dolor físico.

Ocho millones son las divinidades del Shinto

que viajan por la tierra, secretas.

Esos modestos númenes nos tocan,

nos tocan y nos dejan.

Shinto — Jorge Luís Borges Translated by Hoyt Rogers

When sorrow lays us low

For a second we are saved

By humble windfalls

Of mindfulness or memory:

The taste of a fruit, the taste of water,

That face given back to us by a dream,

The first jasmine of November,

The endless yearning of the compass,

A book we thought was lost,

The throb of a hexameter,

The slight key that opens a house to us,

The smell of a library, or of sandalwood,

The former name of a street,

The colors of a map,

An unforeseen etymology,

The smoothness of a filed fingernail,

The date we were looking for,

The twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,

A sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities

Travel secretly throughout the earth.

Those modest gods touch us —

Touch us and move on.

Link to: Esa Cara Que Un Sueño Nos Devuelve

Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.

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alexwh
Argentine Poet Jorge Luís Borges

Into Bunny Watson. I am a Vancouver-based magazine photographer/writer. I have a popular daily blog which can be found at:http://t.co/yf6BbOIQ alexwh@telus.net