translated by Robert Mezey

I was afraid the future (already waning)

Would be an endless corridor of mirrors,

All blurred and meaningless and disappearing,

An idle repetition of vanities,

And in the failing light that precedes sleep

I asked my gods, whose names I do not know,

To send my empty days something or someone.

They did. Here is the Motherland. My ancestors

Served her with many years of exile,

With poverty, with hunger, and with war –

Now here, once more, the beautiful pure danger.

I am not those tutelary shades

I praised in verses time will not forget.

I am a blind man; I am seventy;

I am not Francisco Borges of Uruguay

Who died with a pair if bullets in his chest

Among the final agonies of men

In the blood and stench of a field hospital;

But still the Motherland, today dishonored,

Wants me, with my obscure grammarian’s pen

Adept at academic trivia

And worlds away from the real work of swords,

To gather the vast murmurings of the epic

And claim my place. And I am doing it.