Not Even Dust




I don’t want to be who I am.  Cruel luck
Has provided me the nineteenth century,
The dirt and routine of Castille,
Repeated happenings, the morning
That, promising the day, gives us the vespers,
The sermon of the priest or the barber,
Solitude that goes leaving time behind
And an errant illiterate niece.
I am a man well on into his years.  A random
Page revealed to me unused voices
That searched for me, Amidas and Urganda.
I sold my earth and bought books
That thoroughly examined great undertakings:
The Grail, that received human blood
That the son spilled to save us,
The golden idol of Mohammed,
The irons, the battlements, the flags
And the operations of magic.
Christian horsemen roamed
The kingdoms of earth, vindicating
Offended honor or imposing
Justice with the edge of a sword.
May God that an employ restore
To our time that noble exercise.
My dreams watch over it.  I have felt it
At times in my sad celibate flesh.
I don’t even know its name.  I, Quijano,
Will be that paladin.  I will be my dream.
In this old house there is an ancient shield
And a leaf of Toledo
And a lance and truthful books
That at my arm promise victory.
At my arm?  My face (which I haven’t seen)
Doesn’t project a face in the mirror.
I am not even dust.  I am a dream
That intertwines sleep and vigilance
My brother and father, captain Cervantes,
Who fought in the seas of Lepanto
And knew some Castillians and something of the Arab . . .
So that I may dream of the other
Whose green memory will be part
Of the days of man, I implore you:
My God, my dreamer, go on dreaming me.


Jorge Luis Borges