Yesterday I wrote about an essay by Borges titled Feeling in Death. A good companion piece to that essay is the poem The Cyclical Night, La noche ciclica. The poem expresses many of the same sentiments as Feeling in Death:
Night after night sets me down in the world
On the outskirts of this city. A remote street
Which might be either north or west or south,
But always with a blue-washed wall, the shade
Of a fig tree, and a sidewalk of broken concrete.
This, here, is Buenos Aires. time, which brings
Either love or money to men, hands on to me
Only this withered rose, this empty tracery
Of streets with names recurring from the past
In my blood: Laprida, Cabrera, Soler, Suárez…
…
Squares weighed down by a night in no one’s care
Are the vast patios of an empty palace,
And the single-minded streets creating space
Are corridors for sleep and nameless fear.
…
In my human flesh, eternity keeps recurring.
Que es de los arrabales. Una esquina remota
Que puede ser del norte, del sur o del oeste,
Pero que tiene siempre una tapia celeste,
Una higuera sombría y una vereda rota.
Ahi está Buenos Aires. El tiempo que a los hombres
Trae el amor o el oro, a mí apenas me deja
Esta rosa apagada, esta vana madeja
De calles que repiten los pretéritos nombres
De mi sangre: Laprida, Cabrera, Soler, Suárez…
…
Las plazas agravadas por la noche sin dueño
Son los patios profundos de un árido palacio
Y las calles unánimes que engendran el espacio
Son corredores de vago miedo y de sueño.
…
Vuelve a mi carne humana la eternidad constante.