Recursive Gallery

"Zeus himself could not undo the web
of stone closing around me,
I have forgotten the men I was before;
I follow the hated path of monotonous walls
that is my destiny. Severe galleries
which curve in secret circles
to the end of the years. Parapets
cracked by the day’s usury.
In the pale dust I have discerned
signs that frighten me. In the concave
evenings the air has carries a roar

toward me, or the echo of a desolate howl.

I know there is an Other in the shadows,

whose fate it is to wear out the long solitudes

which weave and unweave this Hades

and to long for my blood and devour my death.
Each of us seeks the other.
If only this were the final day of waiting."

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)
"The Labyrinth" in Borges: Selected Poems