‘Convinced of decrepitude
By so many noble certainties of dust,
We linger and lower our voices
Among the long rows of mausoleums’
The Recoleta cemetery is the city’s Montparnasse, a bone labyrinth for the remains of generals and diplomats and statesman, the site of homages to Evita’s grave, and the subject of an early poem by Jorge Luis Borges. The poem is a collection from his work Ficciones
The poem is a conversation between the narrator and an unnamed companion. Borges’s poetry is often described as baroque, but this poem reads more like a juvenile ‘Tintern Abbey’. Romanticism, maybe, but it’s clear that this isn’t a romantic relationship. Instead, the figures on this shared walk are companions in ideals, losing themselves in thoughts of being and non-being in the lanes of the dead.
Adapted from BorgesArchive
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