Things

(Jorge Luis Borges)

This cane, loose change, my ring of keys,

this trusty lock, belated notes which the short

time left to me will leave no time to peruse,

the deck of cards and the checkerboard,

a book, and in its pages a shrivelled flower,

memento of an afternoon that was surely

unforgettable (forgotten now, however) —

this west-facing mirror, violet with the fiery

show of an illusory dawn. How many things —

doorsills, doornails, mapbooks, wineglasses, tongs —

slave their lives away in our service, taciturn,

unseeing, so inscrutably reserved . . .

they will endure beyond our own going

and they will never realize we are gone.