The first poem Jorge Luis Borges published, written in Majorca in 1919, was “Hymn to the Sea.” He would later repudiate its Whitman-esque excess. For World Oceans Day this year, when I am trapped inside my house all day because of wildfire smoke that has blown down from Canada, I’ve translated the third (of four) verses.
Hymn to the Sea (fragment)
The sea my brother sings its fullness to me.
I’ve wandered for a long time the wandering streets in sacred midnight —
Your waters weave garlands of foam-kisses,
Offered to me in solemn silence with fleshy blooms.
Today the winds steal all these things, all past things,
All things – so that you only, sea, exist for me.
Powerful, bare, wind and waves, and the blue that is not-blue —
The miracle of the blue.
(I dream a hymn to the sea with panting waves and rhythms.)
Now I make you a poem:
Following the adamic cadence of your waves
The salt primacy of your breath,
The thunder of sound anchored in the North
Drunk with light and leprosy,
With undersea voices, with lights and echoes,
Abysms and cracks
Where your monk’s hand constantly caresses the sunken dead.
A hymn –
Images of redness, of light, of constellations.