Poems by Jorge Luis BorgesnTranslated by Robert MezeynTexasnHere too. Here, as on the other unfurlingnFrontier of the continent, the greatnPrairie where a solitary cry fades out;nHere too the lariat, the Indian, the yearling.nHere too the secretive and unseen birdnThat over the clamorous strains of historynSings for one evening and its memory;nHere too the mystic alphabet, the wordnOf stars which dictate to my cursive flownNames that the days on their labyrinthine waynWill leave behind them: San Jacinto, say,nOr that other Thermopylae, the Alamo.nHere too that unknown, brief,nNeedy and fretful commotion, life.nRobert Mezey is a professor of classics at Pomona Collegenin Claremont, California.n26/CHRONICLESnMelvillenAlways around him was the ancestral sea,nSea of the Saxons, those who called it whale-road,nBy which they coupled two enormous things,nThe whale and the vast sea it vastly ploughs.nThe sea belonged to him. And when his eyesnBeheld on the high seas the walls of water,nHe had already longed for and possessed themnIn that collateral sea which is the ScripturesnOr in the misty profile of the archetypes.nAs man, he gave himself to the seven seasnAnd to the long, exhausting days and nightsnAnd knew the harpoon crimsoned by Leviathan,nThe brindled sands, the night smells and the dawn smells,nAnd the horizon where Chance lies in wait.nAnd then the exultation of being brave,nAnd, at the end, the joy of spying Ithaca.nnn