Have you anything to say in your defense?

Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick.

They all know that I’m alive,
That I’m vicious; and they don’t know
The December that follows from that January.
Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick.

There is an empty place
In my metaphysical shape
That no one can reach:
A cloister of silence
That spoke with the fire of its voice muffled.

On the day I was born,
God was sick.

Brother, listen to me, listen…
Oh, all right. Don’t worry, I won’t leave
Without taking my Decembers along,
Without leaving my Januaries behind.
Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick.

They all know that I’m alive, that I chew my food…and they don’t know
Why harsh winds whistle in my poems,
The narrow uneasiness of a coffin,
Winds untangled from the Sphinx
Who holds the desert for routine questioning.

Yes, they all know…Well, they don’t know
That the light gets skinny
And the darkness gets bloated…
And they don’t know that the mystery
Joins things together…
That he is the hunchback
Musical and sad who stands a little way off
And foretells
The dazzling progression from the limts to the Limits.

On the day I was born,
God was sick,
Gravely.

–Cesar Vallejo

Waking Up

Daylight leaks in, and sluggishly I surface from my dreams into the common dream and things assume again their proper places and their accustomed shapes. Into this present the Past intrudes, in all its dizzying range-the centuries-old habits of migration in birds and men, the armies in their legions all fallen to the sword, and Rome and Carthage.

The trappings of my day also come back: my voice, my face, my nervousness, my luck. If only Death, that other waking-up, would grant me a time free of all memory of my own name and all that I have been!

If only morning meant oblivion!

-Borges