[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).

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Roger—

Originally Posted by 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.
I got rid of “pictures,” which allowed me to improve the rhyme. Good suggestion!

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).
In English, “twilight” is used pretty much exclusively to refer to the time just after sunset. I cannot think of a time when it was used to refer to the time just before sunrise. The Spanish “crepúsculo” can refer equally to either.

Thanks for your continuing support and encouragement.

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]

The estate does seem to tolerate translations of one or two poems in magazines now and then. But anyone who wants to do a book of Borges translations is out of luck, as Mezey learned the hard way.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Julie—

Wow! I really like your suggestion for the last two lines! I used them just as you proposed them. Thanks very much!

Interesting to learn about the copyright drama.

Glenn