All the Lights

Translated by Kevin Klein

For an instant, eternity
was precisely that: an instant.
The universe, something small and intimate,
something that with strange fragility
drifted away from the word infinite.
An improvised sky
furrowed by artificial stars;
galactic lanterns,
boats floating in the abyss,
lights splashing the darkness, revealing it.

I sensed that you were there,
gravitating in the night
among the gleam
in the amber glow of the lamps.
I supposed that Borges would imagine this instant
was every single instant,
that each light was all the lights.
I understood that I knew less
of the meanderings of time
than the distant features of your face
or the unfathomable mechanisms of memory.

For an instant, I forgot
the contours of my own countenance.
For just a moment
I thought I remembered the exact time
of my creation:
the precise instant when
my deep darkness
turned to light:
a tiny radiance,
almost imperceptible,
that tore forever
the ethereal veil of the night.

Now I know that You are the living origin
of radiance.
I am still a fragile flicker,
not yet finished with birth.

Santiago Vázquez is a freelance writer and translator. He lives in Mendoza, Argentina, where night often finds him lost in the glow of a blank page. Several of his short stories and poems have been published in different literary outlets.

Art by Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991).

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