Wednesday, September 27, 2017

1015. To John Keats (1795 - 1821) -Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler

From the beginning to your early death
a terrible beauty lay in wait for you
as good or bad luck lay in wait for others.
That beauty waited for you in the dawns
of London, or by chance in the pages of
a dictionary of mythology,
in the ordinary gifts of a normal day,
or in a face, a voice, the mortal lips
of Fanny Brawne. O posthumous Keats
snatched away from earth, blinded by time,
the nightingale on high and the Greek urn
are your eternity, o fleeting one.
You were the fire. In panic memory

you are not ashes now. You are glory.

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