SOURCE: “Language as a Musical Organism: Borges' Later Poetry,” in Borges and the Kabbalah: And Other Essays on His Fiction and Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 124–36.

In the following essay, Alazraki examines Borges's later poetry, and praises its ability to convey “verbal music.”

From his early poems of the twenties to his later collection Historia de la noche (A History of the Night, 1977), Borges' poetry has traveled a long way. It first moved from a nostalgic rediscovery of his birthplace, Buenos Aires, to a cult of his ancestors and an intimate history of his country: heroes, anti-heroes, counter-heroes. He then found that metaphysical subjects, literary artifacts, and religious myths were not unworthy material for poetry: “The Cyclical Night,” “Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf,” and “The Golem” are samples which illustrate this later period. His perception of poetry in those years could be defined, in T. S...