Waiting for you is your treasure that will never decay| Borges

∞ Author, 1960

The Maker

Blind Pew[1]

Away from the sea and the beautiful war,

Love sublimates the lost in this way,

This blind pirate has stepped on it

Dirt roads in the English countryside.

Chased and barked by the vicious dogs on the farm,

Used as a target for bullying by the village boy,

He slept in a sick and broken one

In the dream, between the black soil of the ditch.

He knew about the distant golden beaches

There is a secret treasure for him

This is the consolation of his mischievous fate.

You too, in other golden beaches,

Waiting for you is your treasure that will never decay:

That great and hazy and inevitable death.

Translation Notes:

[1] English: "Pew the Blind", a character in Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, retired pirate.

—Translated by Borges | Chen Dongbiao

—Reading and Rereading—

Blind Pew

Far from the sea and the beautiful war,

that thus love what has lost praises,

the blind buccaneer fatigued

the earthy roads of England.

Barked by the dogs of the farms,

pifia of the boys of the village,

slept a chagrined and cracked

sue or in the black dust of the trenches.

I knew that on remote golden beaches

it was his a hidden treasure

and this alleviated their opposite fate;

to you too, on other golden beaches,

Your treasure awaits you incorruptible:

the vast and vague and necessary death.

Chen Dongbiao translation and others

Caption: Pew the Blind

By N. C. Wyeth