In these red labyrinths of London <br />I find that I have chosen <br />the strangest of all callings, <br />save that, in its way, any calling is strange. <br />Like the alchemist <br />who sought the philosopher's stone <br />in quicksilver, <br />I shall make everyday words-- <br />the gambler's marked cards, the common coin-- <br />give off the magic that was their <br />when Thor was both the god and the din, <br />the thunderclap and the prayer. <br />In today's dialect <br />I shall say, in my fashion, eternal things: <br />I shall try to be worthy <br />of the great echo of Byron. <br />This dust that I am will be invulnerable. <br />If a woman shares my love <br />my verse will touch the tenth sphere of the concentric heavens; <br />if a woman turns my love aside <br />I will make of my sadness a music, <br />a full river to resound through time. <br />I shall live by forgetting myself. <br />I shall be the face I glimpse and forget, <br />I shall be Judas who takes on <br />the divine mission of being a betrayer, <br />I shall be Caliban in his bog, <br />I shall be a mercenary who dies <br />without fear and without faith, <br />I shall be Polycrates, who looks in awe <br />upon the seal returned by fate. <br />I will be the friend who hates me. <br />The persian will give me the nightingale, and Rome the sword. <br />Masks, agonies, resurrections <br />will weave and unweave my life, <br />and in time I shall be Robert Browning.<br /><br />Jorge Luis Borges<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/browning-decides-to-be-a-poet/
