A Wolf

A Wolf - meaning Summary

Solitude Under Approaching Doom

Jorge Luis Borges' a wolf depicts a lone wolf moving through twilight, hunted by men determined to exterminate his kind. The poem presents the animal both as an individual and as the last remnant of a lineage, invoking Norse names and the word "Saxon" to suggest historical and cultural forces behind eradication. The wolf's solitude, the forged blade, and the image of a future dream of the animal in America emphasize loss, memory, and the futility of remembering after extinction. The tone is elegiac and inevitable, focusing on human violence and doomed persistence.

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Grey and furtive in the final twilight, he lopes by, leaving his spoor along the bank of this nameless river that has quenched the thirst of his throat, these waters that repeats no stars. Tonight, the wolf is a shade who runs alone and searches for his mate and feels cold. He is the last wolf in all of Angle-land. Odin and Thor know him. In a commanding house of stone a king has made up his mind to put an end to wolves. The powerful blade of your death has already been forged. Saxon wolf, your seed has come to nothing. To be cruel isn't enough. You are the last. A thousand years will pass and an old man will dream of you in America. What use can that future dream possibly be to you? Tonight the men who followed through the woods the spoor you left are closing in on you, grey and furtive in the final twilight