Online Poems

for Craig White's Literature Courses


Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Remorse

 

I have committed the worst of sins

One can commit. I have not been

Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion

Take and engulf me, mercilessly.

My parents bore me for the risky

And the beautiful game of life,

For earth, water, air and fire.

I failed them, I was not happy.

Their youthful hope for me unfulfilled.

I applied my mind to the symmetric

Arguments of art, its web of trivia.

They willed me bravery. I was not brave.

It never leaves me. Always at my side,

That shadow of a melancholy man.