Poetry Friday: Boast of Quietness by Borges

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigous than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensible, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away,
he doesn’t expect to arrive.

Jorge Luis Borges was a famous Argentine writer and poet. He became blind at the age of fifty-five due to a hereditary condition. On his blindness, Borges wrote: “When I think of what I’ve lost, I ask, ‘Who know themselves better than the blind?’ – for every thought becomes a tool.“