Limites [English translation]

Of all those boulevards blurred into the sunset

There’s one (I know not which) that I have strolled

Across for the last time without a care,

And unaware of what it was, controlled

By One who predesigns almighty norms,

All laws and a strict scale in secrecy

For dreams and shadows, formulas and forms

Which are the texture of our tapestry.

If all things have a limit and a length,

A final moment and a nevermore,

Then who shall let us know upon whose house

We have unwittingly now sealed the door?

Through the bleached window night withdraws again

And, in the jumbled stack of books that shed

A craze of shadows on the hazy table,

There shall be one that must be left unread.

Out in the south stands more than one worn gate

There with its cactus and cemented urns

Whose entry is forbidden to my feet

As in a lithograph. Nothing returns:

You’ve bolted shut a certain door forever;

A mirror waits in vain, expecting you;

The crossroads seem to lie unbarred before you

But four-faced Janus watches what you do.

Among your many memories is one

Which has been lost to you forevermore;

They will not see you by that fountain nor

Beneath the yellow moon, or the white sun.

Your voice shall never come to what the Persian

Said in his tongue of roses, wine and birds,

When under dusk before the light is scattered

You wish to say some unforgettable words.

The ceaseless Rhône? My European lake?

That yesterday I hunch upon today

Will be erased as Carthage by the Romans

Whose salt and fire it could not hold at bay.

Here in the dawn I hear a multitude,

A murmur fading out of mind and ear.

They have forgotten me who used to love me.

Borges and Space and Time have left me here.