The Cloisters by Jorge Luis Borges From a place in the kingdom of France They brought the stained glass and the stones to build on the island of Manhattan these hollow Cloisters. They are not apocryphal. They are faithful monuments to a nostalgia. An American voice tells us to pay for what we want, because this whole building is an invention and the money as it leaves our hand will become shekels or vanish like smoke. This abbey strikes more terror than the pyramid of Giza or the labyrinth at Knossos, because it too is a dream. We hear the fountains murmur, but that fountains in the Patio of the Orange Trees or the epic of Der Asra. We hear clear Latin voices but those voices echoed in Aquitaine when it was a stones throw from Islam. We see in the tapestries the resurrection and the death of the white condemned unicorn, because time in this place does not obey an order. The laurel trees I touch will flower when Leif Ericsson sights the sands of America. I feel a touch of vertigo. I am not used to eternity. The Cloisters by Jorge Luis Borges, from La Cifra (1981) Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 02:17:37 +0000
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