I Am Fragments of Borges

For the mirrors and the rivers
For the sunsets and the generations
For Shakespeare and Schopenhauer and the universe
For everything and nothing
God has created nights well-populated with dreams
Maybe God needs them as a warning to carry out His plan of
infinite creation

I think of the mirror
I think of the universe
I have dreamed of Jorge Luis Borges
Jew, gentile or simply a man
In this world, beauty is all of us
It is also like the river with no end

The rabbi would explain:
“There they are, the gardens
There they are, the rivers and the mirrors
Scattered in scattered labyrinths
Seek for pleasure of seeking, not of finding
God moves the player, and this player, the piece”

Perhaps God has condemned me to time in this world
I am and I am not
Perhaps I am the river with no end
Perhaps I am the mirror with no end
Borges and I, I don’t know which of us two wrote this page
And I know the answer all too well

-Ivan Smason