The Endless Rose
by Jorge Luis Borges
In the fifth century of the Prophet’s age, Persia gazed down from her minarets on the invasion of the desert lances, and Attar of Nishapur glimpsed a rose, addressing it in voiceless words such as one thinks but does not pray: Your shadowy sphere is in my hands. Time is bending and forgetting us both, this afternoon, this abandoned garden. Your gentle weight lies moist on the air. The relentless tide of your fragrance rises to my old, declining face, but I know you longer than that child who saw you through the sheets of a dream, or here in this garden, some certain morning. The whiteness of the sun may belong to you or the gold of the moon, or the crimson certainty of a sword in victory. I am blind and know nothing, yet I still see there are more roads to travel. And every thing is really an infinity of things. You are music and rivers, palaces, angels, and skies, an endless rose, infinite and intimate, which the Lord will reveal to my lifeless eyes.
