[Roger Slater]

I think that changing "dross" into "ore" undermines the meaning quite a bit. Dross is the waste product after the metal is extracted from the ore, as you know, so it's hard to make sense of the line as translated. As with cake, you can't smelt your ore and have it too.

Here's a suggestion that I'm not entirely happy with, since it uses a slant rhyme, but it may be worth considering. And I've thrown in another suggestion for L1, which you can have for no extra charge:

There's just one thing that's not. Oblivion.
God, who saves the metal, saves the dross
and codes in memory for His revelation
moons that will be, and moons that will be lost.

PS-- I have a further suggestion. Change "revelation" to "retention," which I think suits the meaning better and also is a step closer to being a rhyme for "oblivion," though still not very near.
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[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Roger—

I see your point. (Nice pun with “undermines,” BTW.) The English word “ore” means the mineral matrix with the valuable metal included in it. The Spanish word “escoria” means the waste left after the valuable metal has been extracted. I will adjust accordingly. Good catch!

I like the improved meter you suggested for S1L1. Susan suggested something similar.

I will also try using an ABBA rhyme scheme in the first quatrain as in the original.

Thanks for your careful and helpful critique.

Glenn

[Susan McLean]

Glenn, I think "flee" has the wrong overtones. What about "go/know" as rhymes in L12/L13?

Susan

[Glenn Wright]

Originally Posted by Susan McLean

Glenn, I think "flee" has the wrong overtones. What about "go/know" as rhymes in L12/L13?

Hi, Susan—

You and Carl both saw a problem with “flee.” The problem with “go/know” is that “know” and “understand” mean the same thing. I went with “make your way/survey.” On one hand, I regret not including “sólo” in the translation, but I think it’s clear enough that the epiphany will occur “only” post-mortem. On the other hand, I like “survey,” which suggests taking in a very broad expanse, perhaps from a distant, elevated vantage point.

Thanks for your helpful responses.

Glenn

[Susan McLean]

Glenn, I think it helps a lot to have "only" in the next-to-last line. It picks up the insistence on only one in the first line. There is a force to that insistence that I think adds a lot to the tone of the poem. I think you are wrong about "know" and "understand" meaning exactly the same thing. People know many facts that they do not understand. But go with whichever word you like.

Susan

[Roger Slater]

Glenn, Merriam-Webster defines twilight as "the light from the sky between full night and sunrise or between sunset and full night produced by diffusion of sunlight through the atmosphere and its dust," which is how I use the term as well, which is the same definition as the Spanish word. But even if it were less common in English, I still think the meaning would be clear to the reader in context.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Roger—

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

Glenn, Merriam-Webster defines twilight as "the light from the sky between full night and sunrise or between sunset and full night produced by diffusion of sunlight through the atmosphere and its dust," which is how I use the term as well, which is the same definition as the Spanish word. But even if it were less common in English, I still think the meaning would be clear to the reader in context.

I checked several dictionaries. About half defined twilight scientifically as a period of time when the sun is just below the horizon but its light is diffused in the atmosphere, so it could refer either to dusk or dawn.

The other half were like this example from Collins English Dictionary:

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us...glish/twilight

This seems to me to be the more common literary usage.

Glenn

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Susan—

You convinced me. I thought about your suggestion and decided that I liked the two sólos serving as emphatic, absolute bookends for the poem, so I added them into L1 and L13.

The exact geometry involved in Borges’s description of traveling to the other side of the sunset is rather confusing. It reminded me of Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” where she and Death, in their carriage, chaperoned by Immortality, travel beyond the fields and children playing and finally “beyond the setting sun.” I concluded that “only once past the sunset” meant the same as being “on the other side of the sunset.” Both seem pretty clearly to be tropes for death.

Thanks for your help!

Glenn

[Julie Steiner]

I've been circling this and watching the edits with approval, particularly waste/displaced and reflections/collections.

Something like this might let the last two lines focus more on the sight imagery:

only once past the sunset will you survey
and understand the Archetypes and Splendors.
-->
when you have passed the sunset, you'll survey —
only then — the Archetypes and Splendors.

It's a pity that Borges's estate is so hard to work with for copyright permissions. They granted exclusive translation rights to Andrew Hurley for a lot of money, and have declined permission to all other translators I know of. They even suppressed the work of Norman Thomas di Giovanni, who had worked with Borges for years on collaborative translations. (Borges and di Giovanni had split the proceeds of those 50/50, and apparently the estate and the publisher wanted a bigger share of the pie after Borges's death.)

[Roger Slater]

You might improve on S2. I think "reflected pictures" instead of simply "reflections" is a bit labored and forced (I don't usually think of what I see in a mirror as a "picture"), and doesn't even have the virtue of setting up a perfect rhyme. Also, "putting on display" is really just a wordy alternative to a "displays", and especially when I see a wordy alternative in rhyme position it always bothers me a bit.

I would also suggest that you replace "which, between the dawn and dusk of day" with "which, between the twilights of the day," since it's much closer to what Borges wrote and I think is a more original way to phrase it than the standard dawn/dusk trope. (Don't worry about "dos" twilights— we all know how many there are).