object:1.jlb - Unknown Street
book class:Borges - Poems
author class:Jorge Luis Borges
subject class:Poetry
class:chapter
UNKNOWN STREET
Twilight of the dove
the Hebrews called the beginning of evening
when the shadow does not mire the footsteps
and the coming of night is recognized
like an awaited music,
not as a symbol of our essential insignificance.
In that hour of fine sandy light
my footsteps found a street I did not know
opening as though
onto a noble sweep of terrace,
disclosing on cornices and walls
colors as soft as the sky itself
that moved the background.
Everythingfrank mediocrity of the plain houses,
playfulness of little columns and knockers,
perhaps a girls hope from the window railings
entered my vain heart
with the clarity of a tear.
That may have been the one hour
ever to enhance the street with a spell,
giving it privileges of tenderness,
making it real like a legend or a verse;
what is certain is that I felt it remotely near,
like a memory which arrives exhausted
only because it has come from the depths of the soul.
Miracle of the glowing street,
intimate and deeply stirring;
and only afterward
I realized that that place was strange,
that every house is a candelabra
where the lives burn each in its separate flame,
that each of our unthinking footsteps
makes its way over the Golgothas of others.
[W. S. Merwin]
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last updated: 2022-02-04 05:12:52
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