“A writer - and, I believe,
generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a
resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must
feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations,
our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as
clay, so that we may shape our art.” – Jorge Luis Borges
Borges,
born in 1899, was an Argentine essayist, short story writer and poet who knew
the value and power of the things within our “personal” world and how
beneficial they could be to him as a writer.
For Saturday’s Poem, here are Borges’ thoughts on that topic, vividly
portrayed in his award-winning poem,
Things
My walking stick, small change, key
ring,
The docile lock and the belated
Notes my few days left will grant
No time to read, the cards, the
table,
A book, in its pages, that pressed
Violet, the leavings of an afternoon
Doubtless unforgettable, forgotten,
The reddened mirror facing to the
west
Where burns illusory dawn. Many
things,
Files, sills, atlases, wineglasses,
nails,
Which serve us, like unspeaking
slaves,
So blind and so mysteriously secret!
They’ll long outlast our oblivion;
And never know that we are gone.
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