1015. To John Keats (1795 - 1821) -Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Stephen Kessler

From the beginning to your early death

a terrible beauty lay in wait for you

as good or bad luck lay in wait for others.

That beauty waited for you in the dawns

of London, or by chance in the pages of

a dictionary of mythology,

in the ordinary gifts of a normal day,

or in a face, a voice, the mortal lips

of Fanny Brawne. O posthumous Keats

snatched away from earth, blinded by time,

the nightingale on high and the Greek urn

are your eternity, o fleeting one.

You were the fire. In panic memory

you are not ashes now. You are glory.

1014. Low Tide At St Andrews - Emily Pauline Johnson

(New Brunswick)

The long red flats stretch open to the sky,

Breathing their moisture on the August air.

The seaweeds cling with flesh-like fingers where

The rocks give shelter that the sands deny;

And wrapped in all her summer harmonies 

St Andrews sleeps beside her sleeping seas.

The far-off shores swim blue and indistinct,

Like half-lost memories of some old dream.

The listless waves that catch each sunny gleam

Are idling up the waterways land-linked,

And, yellowing along the harbour’s breast,

The light is leaping shoreward from the west.

And naked-footed children, tripping down,

Light with young laughter, daily come at eve

To gather dulse and sea clams and then heave

Their loads, returning laden to the town,

Leaving a strange grey silence when they go, 

The silence of the sands when tides are low.