Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and he was destined to become a writer. Since his childhood, the importance of literature was always present. His father, himself a lawyer and frustrated novelist, kept pulling Borges towards literature, not that Borges needed much convincing. As he wrote many times, he knew since an early age his destiny was to be literary, his life dedicated, thought out, and immersed in literature. Even the many trips he took were, in the end, a literary excuse to invent and reinvent his own cosmology. Borges died in 1986. One can take anything Borges wrote and be caught forever by his talent, his ingenuity, and his absolute commitment to literature.

Jorge Luis Borges
(1899-1986)

To a Cat

Mirrors are not more silent
Nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
In the moonlight, you are that panther
We catch sight of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
We look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
Yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
Caress of my hand. You have accepted,
Since that long forgotten past,
The love of the distrustful hand.
You belong to another time. You are lord
Of a place bounded like a dream.

Jorge Luis Borges

A Un Gato

No son más silenciosos los espejos
Ni más furtiva el alba aventurera;
Eres, bajo la luna, esa pantera
Que nos es dado divisar de lejos.
Por obra indescifrable de un decreto
Divino, te buscamos vanamente;
Más remoto que el Ganges y el poniente,
Tuya es la soledad, tuyo el secreto.
Tu lomo condesciende a la morosa
Caricia de mi mano. Has admitido,
Desde esa eternidad que ya es olvido,
El amor de la mano recelosa.
En otro tiempo estás. Eres el dueño
De un ámbito cerrado como un sueño.

Jorge Luis Borges

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