'A sower of verses'

 

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges

 

Born in Argentina in August of 1899, Borges was one of the 20^th Century’s most important writers and perhaps the most important figure in Spanish-language literature since Cervantes.  He wrote numerous short stories and essays but said he most loved poetry.  He wrote his first poems as a boy and published his first book of poems at age 23.   Over his lifetime (he died at age 86) he wrote thousands of poems.    For Saturday's Poem, from his collection Poems of the Night, here is Borges’,

 

The Forging

Like the blind man whose hands are precursors
that push aside walls and glimpse heavens
slowly, flustered, I feel
in the crack of night
the verses that are to come.
I must burn the abominable darkness
in their limpid bonfire:
the purple of words
on the flagellated shoulder of time.
I must enclose the tears of evening
in the hard diamond of the poem.
No matter if the soul
walks naked and lonely as the wind
if the universe of a glorious kiss
still embraces my life.
The night is good fertile ground
for a sower of verses.