In a deserted place in Iran there is a stone tower, not very high, without any door or windows. In its only room (whose floor is dirt and whose shape is a circle) are a wooden table and a bench. In this circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing, in letters that I don’t understand, a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell. . . . This process has no end, and no one will be able to read what the prisoners are writing.
Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires, 24 August 1899 — Geneva, 14 June 1986) was an Argentinean writer. The original prose poem “Un sueño” was published in La cifra (1981). Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).
|
| Print