I keep returning to the poems of Jorge Luis Borges in the labyrinthine journey of my life. For over half a century, his writings have shone a strong light on my path forward. Several years after Borges died, John Updike translated his poem “The Labyrinth” and had it published in The New Yorker.

The Labyrinth

Zeus, Zeus himself could not undo these nets
Of stone encircling me. My mind forgets
The persons I have been along the way,
The hated way of monotonous walls,
Which is my fate. The galleries seem straight
But curve furtively, forming secret circles
At the terminus of years. And the parapets
Have been worn smooth by the passage of days.
Here, in the tepid alabaster dust,
Are tracks that frighten me. The hollow air
Of evening sometimes brings a bellowing,
Or the echo, desolate, of bellowing.
I know that hidden in the shadows there
Lurks another, whose task is to exhaust
The loneliness that braids and weaves this hell,
To crave my blood, and fatten on my death.
We seek each other. Oh, if only this
Were the last day of our antithesis!