To the Son
It was not I who begot you. It was the dead–
my father, and his father, and their forebers,
all those who through a labyrinth of loves
descend from Adam and the desert wastes
of Cain and Abel, in a dawn so ancient
it has become mythology by now,
to arrive, blood and marrow, at this day
in the future, in which I now beget you.
I feel their multitudes. They are who we are,
and you among us, you and the sons to come
that you will beget. The latest in the line
and in red Adam’s line. I too am those others.
Eternity is present in the things
of time and its impatient happenings.
Jorge Luis Borges (translated)
from El otro, el mismo (1964)
A Tree Grew Inside my Head
Octavio Paz (translated)
I May, I Might, I Must (Marianne Moore)
from O To Be a Dragon (1959)
Morning at the Window (T.S. Eliot)
from Collected Poems 1909-1962
Turtle (Kay Ryan)
From Flamingo Watching (1994)
A Light Breather (Theodore Roethke)
from The Waking (1953)
Obituaries (Billy Collins)
from Nine Horses (2002)
