vocal Texts for The Palace (VOICESPACE IV)

poem by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Alastair Reid

 

The Palace is not infinite. The walls, the ramparts, the gardens, the labyrinths, the staircases, the  terraces, the parapets, the doors, the galleries, the circular or rectangular  patios, the cloisters, the intersections, the cisterns, the anterooms, the  chambers, the alcoves, the libraries, the attics, the dungeons, the sealed cells  and the vaults, are not less in quantity than the grains of sand in the Ganges,  but their number has a limit. From the roofs, toward sunset, many people can  make out the forges, the workshops, the stables, the boatyards and the huts of  the slaves.   

It is granted to no one to traverse more than an infinitesimal part of the  palace. Some know only the cellars. We can take in some faces, some voices,  some words, but what we perceive is of the feeblest. Feeble and precious at  the same time. The date which the chisel engraves in the tablet, and which is  recorded in the parochial registers, is later than our own death; we are  already dead when nothing touches us, neither a word nor a yearning nor a  memory. I know that I am not dead.