Two English Poems

                         I
 
  The useless dawn finds me in a deserted street-
     corner; I have outlived the night.
  Nights are proud waves; darkblue topheavy waves
     laden with all the hues of deep spoil, laden with
     things unlikely and desirable.
  Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals,
     of things half given away, half withheld,
     of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act
     that way, I tell you.
  The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds
     and odd ends: some hated friends to chat
     with, music for dreams, and the smoking of
     bitter ashes.  The things my hungry heart
     has no use for.
  The big wave brought you.
  Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily
     and incessantly beautiful.  We talked and you
     have forgotten the words.
  The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street
     of my city.
  Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to
     make your name, the lilt of your laughter:
     these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
  I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find
     them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and
     to the few stray stars of the dawn.
  Your dark rich life ...
  I must get at you, somehow; I put away those
     illustrious toys you have left me, I want your
     hidden look, your real smile -- that lonely,
     mocking smile your cool mirror knows.
 
                      II
 
  What can I hold you with?
  I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
     moon of the jagged suburbs.
  I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
     long and long at the lonely moon.
  I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
     that living men have honoured in bronze:
     my father's father killed in the frontier of
     Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
     bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
     the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
     --just twentyfour-- heading a charge of
     three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
     vanished horses.
  I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
     whatever manliness or humour my life.
  I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
     been loyal.
  I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
     somehow --the central heart that deals not
     in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
     untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
  I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
     sunset, years before you were born.
  I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
     yourself, authentic and surprising news of
     yourself.
  I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
     hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
     with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
 
 
                    - Jorge Luis Borges (1934)

New beginning

Dicen que un nuevo comienzo es simplemente el final de un algo anterior. Dicen que el final de un algo anterior es un prometedor comienzo. ¿Y qué es mejor? ¿El final que se convierte en comienzo? ¿O el comienzo que recuerda al final?

Lección número 1: let it go. Hay cosas que deben pasar, marcharse. Cosas que debes saber dejar pasar, mientras aprendes a agarrarte a otras. O a veces debes decidirte por una tercera opcion: no agarrarte con demasiada fuerza a nada, flotar en el aire, disfrutar de todas y cada una de las oportunidades, todas y cada una de las locuras, para después poder aterrizar y decidirte por algo a lo que aferrarte otra vez.

El ser humano vive, respira, siente. No puedes no sentir, no puedes no querer, no puedes no desear, no puedes no existir. Pero a veces puedes escapar por un ratito, ser libre de todas esas redes, puedes llegar a distanciarte por un momento de todas esas cosas. ¿Merece la pena? Quien sabe... Puede que si, o puede que no. Si no lo intentas nunca lo sabrás.

Los nuevos comienzos nos dan la oportunidad de elegir cómo queremos que siga la historia. ¿Qué eliges tú?