A blonde in an orange tee-shirt
Brought Borges to meet me today.
The ancient liver-spotted courtier,
Lover of eccentric texts,
Thanked the high-breasted damsel,
And her gold-tipped head flipped and flew away.
His flapping eye,
His asteroid face,
Pinned to rumpled shoulders
took their seat.
A crevasse of jasper teeth opened
And words tumbled over bloodless gums like an avalanche:
'The world has had enough of paper swans.
The sea is not a sleeping woman and
The love you thought you lost is no Icarus,
He's possibly not even Daedalus. Heh. Heh.
Take it from me, a librarian and erstwhile inspector of chickens.'
A labyrinthine man who lived for books,
Who knew the fragrant streets of Buenos Aires,
and the gardens of the pampas
and hardly married,
perhaps never entered into
the river of another body,
Created an entire planet.
The eye swam in its socket,
The rocks fell silent.
I leaned toward him and his mahogany cane
Brushed my hand.
In an airless basement room
I wondered who I would be in loosening my words
And whether the conjurer's art would ever be my own.
