On Embarking on a Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar
I after fifty generations
(Time opens such gulfs out to us all)
Return to the far bank of a mighty river
The Norsemen's longships never reached,
To the harsh, hard-wrought words
Which, with a tongue now long gone to dust,
I used in the days of Northumbria and Mercia
Before becoming Haslam1 or Borges.
Last Saturday, we read how Julius Cæsar
Was the first to come from Romeburg to unmask Britain;
Before the grapes grow back, I shall have heard
The nightingale of the riddle
And the elegy spoken by the twelve
Warriors round their king's burial mound.
To me, these words seem symbols of other symbols,
Variants of German or English-to-be,
But they were once images of the actual
Used by a man to proclaim a sword or the sea;
Tomorrow they will come alive again,
Tomorrow, fyr will not be fire, but rather that fate
Of a tamed changeling god
Whom none can face without feeling an ancient fear.
Glory be to the unending weft
Of cause and effect
Which, before showing me the mirror
Wherein I shall see no one or some other,
Grants me this perfect contemplation
Of a language at its dawn.
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
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Altre opere di Jorge Luis Borges...
