Apocryph of a Reader of Borges

Someone comes to my grave,
has their photograph taken crouching,
one arm on the stone that is my name,
pretending to lean on my shoulder.
Usually they are readers.
I finally look at them without the albumen of blindness.
From the enormous distance where I stand
I focus precisely on the features.
I see the grooved wrinkles on the labyrinth of faces.
I notice the shoes,
which tell who the people are.
Before, I was interested in the hands.

An academician also came
from a fjord on the Baltic Sea,
he knelt down, stammered to me in Swedish
the presentation of a delayed Nobel Prize.
Maria doesn't come anymore, she knows how to find me elsewhere.
As a reader of gory stories
I was of a gentle nature, I visited zoologies,
Under the dictatorship, I was a coward like many others.
That doesn't excuse me.
Libraries can cushion the pain,
but they're not a mitigating circumstance.
I hated disorder, which now amuses me.
I lacked the insatiable vanity of courage.

I loved Nordic sagas, Iceland,
while remaining a man of the South, of Buenos Aires,
which is a homeland apart,
like Saint Petersburg, Naples, Calcutta.
I rejoice that it is the birthplace of a pope,
who grew up on the turbulent course of the Rio de la Plata,
drinking mate, listening to milongas.
I don't remember meeting him.
Some photos belie my memory.
I preferred the use of the simple past tense
made to tell a legend.
As a deceased person, I only have
the infinite present tense.