You Learn

Image by jbelimed from Pixabay

After a while you learn the subtle difference,

Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

And you learn that love doesn’t mean sex,

And company doesn’t mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts,

And presents aren’t promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats,

With your head up and your eyes open.

And you learn to build all your roads on today,

Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans,

And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn,

That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure…

That you really are strong,

And you really do have worth,

And you learn and learn,

With each day you learn.

Over time you learn that being with someone because they offer you a good future, means that sooner or later you’ll want to return to your past.

Over time you understand that the only one who is capable of loving you with your flaws, with no intention of changing you can bring you all happiness.

Over time you learn that if you are with a person only to ease your own loneliness, irremediably you’ll end up not wanting to see them again.

Over time you learn that real friends are few and whoever doesn’t fight for them, sooner or later, will find himself surrounded only with false friendships.

Over time you learn that words spoken in moments of anger continue hurting the other person throughout a lifetime.

Over time you learn that anyone can apologize, but forgiveness emanates only from a great soul.

Over time you learn that if you have hurt a friend harshly it is very likely that your friendship will never be the same.

Over time you realize that despite being happy with your friends, you will cry for those you abandoned.

Over time you realize that every experience lived, with each person, can never be repeated.

Over time you realize that whoever humiliates or scorns another human being, sooner or later will suffer the same humiliations or scorn tenfold.

Over time you learn to build your roads on today, because the path of tomorrow doesn’t exist.

Over time you learn that rushing things or forcing them to happen causes the finale to be different from that you expected.

Over time you realize that in fact the best was not the future, but the moment you were living right in that instant.

Over time you will see that even when you are happy with those around you, you’ll yearn for those who walked away.

Over time you will learn to forgive or ask for forgiveness, to say you love, say you miss, say you need, say you want to be friends, because at the grave, it has no meaning and it’s already late, never let something be too late.

But unfortunately, only over time…

~  Yamira Hernandez/Jorge Luis Borges

(Translation by Patrick Wanis)

To the One Who is Reading Me

Photo credit: dhannte from morguefile.com

You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver
(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won’t read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust
like you; the universe is Proteus.
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.
Know this: in some way you’re already dead.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

(Translated by Tony Barnstone)

To the One Who is Reading Me

Photo credit: dhannte from morguefile.com

You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver
(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won’t read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust
like you; the universe is Proteus.
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.
Know this: in some way you’re already dead.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

(Translated by Tony Barnstone)

The Art of Poetry

Photo by ANDI WHISKEY on Unsplash

To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

The Art of Poetry

Photo by ANDI WHISKEY on Unsplash

To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

~ Jorge Luis Borges