Night Vigil on the Southside

by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Aphrodite Haylock

Because someone has died
—a mysterious one, whose vacant name I know and whose reality none can comprehend—
a Southside house is open until dawn,
unknown to me, never to be seen again,
but waiting for me this night
with a light to sustain wakefulness 
in the small hours, a house marked by bad nights,
distinct, meticulously real.

I walk to it, to its death-laden vigil,
the streets as elemental as memories,
the minutes ample under the night sky,
with no more in the way of audible life
than some neighbourhood loiterers near an empty shop
and a whistling from some place secluded in the world.

My treading slow with anticipation,
I come at last to the square, the house, the intimate door I have sought,
where men obliged to be grave receive me,
men who shared a part in my elders’ years.
We survey our destinies in a prepared room overlooking the patio
upon which night is bearing down in its strength and totality.
We speak of indifferent topics, because present reality in grander,
and in the mirror we are Argentine and we are disparate,
and in vain we measure out the hours with a shared maté.

I am moved by the minute wisdoms 
that are lost in each man’s passing
—a habit of these books, that key, one body among all the others—
irrecoverable patterns that were for him
the hospitality of this world.
I know that any privilege, however obscure, shares in the lineage of miracles
and privileged indeed I am, taking part in this vigil,
gathering around an unknown one, Death,
gathering to set apart or guard this first night of his in death.

(Our faces are expended for this wake;
our weary eyes are raised on high like Jesus.)

And the dead one, the unimaginable?
He lies, ever real, beneath flowers that are not him.
Gracious in his mortality, he will be host
to one more memory for time,
these Southside streets that merit slow disclosure, like the word of God,
and the dark breeze on our faces as we return home,
and one night spent freed from that great tether on the soul:
reality’s perpetual motion.