Sunday Poetry: Jose Luis Borges
To a Cat
Mirrors are not more wrapt in silences
nor the arriving dawn more secretive ;
you, in the moonlight, are that panther figure
which we can only spy at from a distance.
By the mysterious functioning of some
divine decree, we seek you out in vain ;
remoter than the Ganges or the sunset,
yours is the solitude, yours is the secret.
Your back allows the tentative caress
my hand extends. And you have condescended,
since that forever, now oblivion,
to take love from a flattering human hand.
you live in other time, lord of your realm -
a world as closed and separate as dream.
Jorge Luis Borges
Mirrors are not more wrapt in silences
nor the arriving dawn more secretive ;
you, in the moonlight, are that panther figure
which we can only spy at from a distance.
By the mysterious functioning of some
divine decree, we seek you out in vain ;
remoter than the Ganges or the sunset,
yours is the solitude, yours is the secret.
Your back allows the tentative caress
my hand extends. And you have condescended,
since that forever, now oblivion,
to take love from a flattering human hand.
you live in other time, lord of your realm -
a world as closed and separate as dream.
Jorge Luis Borges
posted by Diane at 2:22 PM
2 Comments:
If you will forgive me, Diane. Here's one I wrote for my dear departed cat:
CAT IN AN AFTERNOON
He approaches, latent with insubordination
as he owns his conduct, and he's not
my friend. It seems so only because
I need his moody occupancy.
I've always been a friend to those who build
mud-castles on beaches, afraid without
their inventions, I would disappear.
He stalks the baseboard, regards the screen.
I am not here, except to feed him. Worshipper
of yarn and mouse, he is one syllable.
I wish I'd learned Latin or something
useful like planting orange trees.
I always decline in late afternoon.
Sometime his fur, sometime his claw,
the soft, the sharp enigma.
This door, was it here last week?
Smoke rises, catches fire, then downward,
the first time I catch his eye.
Stunning, Shaw Kenawe!
Thanks.
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