1972

1972

I feared the yet-to-be (which now declines)
would be a profound corridor of mirrors
indistinct, otiose and shrinking,
a repetition of vanities,
and in the penumbra that precedes sleep
I begged my gods, whose names I do not know,
to send something or someone to my days.
They did. It is my country. My forefathers
served it with long proscriptions,
penuries, hungers, battles,
here again is the handsome risk.
I am not those tutelary shades
I praised with verses time will not forget.
I am blind. I have lived my seventy;
I am not the Easterner Francisco Borges
who died with two bullets in his chest,
among the agonies of men,
in the stench of a hospital of blood,
but my country, profaned today wants
me with my obscure grammarian's pen,
learned in academic nimieties
and having nothing to do with the work of the sword,
to congregate the epic's great rumor
and so demand my place. I am doing it.