Excerpt

I Want to Die Completely

I Want to Die Completely
I want to attempt a prayer that is personal, not inherited. I know that such an undertaking demands a sincerity that is more than human. First of all obviously I am barred from asking for anything. Asking that my eyes not be filled with night would be madness; I know of thousands of people who can see, yet who are not particularly happy, just, or wise. Time’s march is a web of causes and effects and asking for any gift of mercy however small it might be is to ask that a link be broken in that web of iron, ask that it be already broken. No one deserves such a miracle. Nor can I plead that my trespasses be forgiven. Forgiveness is the act of another and only I myself can save me. Forgiveness purifies the offended party, not the offender who is virtually untouched by it. The freeness of my free will is perhaps illusory but I am able to give or to dream that I give. I can give courage which I do not possess, I can give hope which does not lie within me, I can teach a willingness to learn that which I hardly know myself or merely glimpse. I want to be remembered less as poet than as friend… I hope that oblivion will not long delay. The designs of the universe are unknown to us but we do know that to think with lucidity and to act with fairness is to aid those designs which shall never be revealed. I want to die completely.

Jorge Luis Borges
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