"Compass" by Jorge Luis Borges

[Original Spanish text]

UNA BRUJULA

A Esther Zemborain de Torres

Todas las cosas son palabras del

Idioma en que Alguien o Algo, noche y día,

Escribe esa infinita algarabía

Que es la historia del mundo.  En su tropel

Pasan Cartago y Roma, yo, tú, él,

Mi vida que no entiendo, esta agonía

De ser enigma, azar, criptografía

Y toda la discordia de Babel.

Detrás del nombre hay lo que no se nombra;

Hoy he sentido gravitar su sombra

En esta aguja azul, lúcida y leve,

Que hacia el confín de un mar tiende su empeño,

Con algo de reloj visto en un sueño

Y algo de ave dormida que se mueve.

[English translation by Richard Wilbur]

COMPASS

To Esther Zemborain de Torres

All things are words of some strange tongue, in thrall

To Someone, Something, who both day and night

Proceeds in endless gibberish to write

The history of the world.  In that dark scrawl

Rome is set down, and Carthage, I, you, all,

And this my being which escapes me quite,

My anguished life that’s cryptic, recondite,

And garbled as the tongues of Babel’s fall.

Beyond the name there lies what has no name;

Today I have felt its shadow stir the aim

Of this blue needle, light and keen, whose sweep

Homes to the utmost of the sea its love,

Suggestive of a watch in dreams, or of

Some bird, perhaps, who shifts a bit in sleep.

Source of the text - Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems 1923-1967, edited by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. [New York]: Delacorte Press, 1972, pages 96-97.

TJB: This Italian sonnet, Neoplatonistic to the core, sees the fallenness of things, larger truth hiding beyond; & a compass as the metaphor to point us there.