Here's my version of the sonnet Joshua mentioned and Roger had translated:
REMORSE
I have committed the very worst of sins
That a man can commit. I have not been
Happpy. Let glaciers of oblivion
Drag me without mercy down to ruin.
My parents brought me forth that I might dare
The beautiful and dangerous game of life,
That I might have earth, water, fire, and air.
I cheated them. By not being happy, I've
Failed to perform their youthful will. My mind
Turned to art's symetrical obstinacies
That weave together trifles and emptinesses.
They left me valor. I was not the valiant kind.
It has never left my side since I began,
This shadow of a miserable man.
I haven't looked at this for years and now that I type it out, I'm rather unhappy with it. I'm satisfied with most of our Borges versions, and proud as can be of some of them, especially some of the sonnets, but this seems pretty bad--
the rhymes aren't very good, most of the lines don't move well, and so on and so forth. I'd better try it again.
I just thought of another terrific poem about poetry, one
by J. V. Cunningham (a marvelous and almost forgotten poet)
called "FOR MY CONTEMPORARIES"
How time reverses
The proud in heart!
I now make verses
Who aimed at art.
But I sleep well.
Ambitious boys
Whose big lines swell
With spiritual noise,
Despise me not,
And be not queasy
To praise somewhat:
Verse is not easy.
But rage who will.
Time that procured me
Good sense and skill
Of madness cured me.
And another one, even better, called "COFFEE"
When I awoke with cold
And looked for you, my dear,
And the dusk inward rolled,
Not light or dark, but drear,
Unabsolute, unshaped,
That no glass can oppose,
I fled not to escape
Myself, but to transpose.
I have so often fled
Wherever I could drink
Dark coffee and there read
More than a man would think
That I say I waste time
For contemplation's sake:
In an uncumbered clime
Minute inductions wake,
Insight flows in my pen.
I know nor fear nor haste.
Time is my own again.
I waste it for the waste.
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