New England 1967
The forms in my dreams have changed; now there are red houses side by side and the delicate bronze of the leaves and chaste winter and pious wood. As on the seventh day, the world is good. In the twilight there persists what’s almost non-existent, bold, sad, an ancient murmur of Bibles, war. Soon (they say) the first snow will fall America waits for me on every street, but I feel in the decline of evening today so long, and yesterday so brief. Buenos Aires, I go journeying your streets, without time or reason.
New England 1967 - meaning Summary
Travel and Divided Belonging
The poem records Borges's divided sense of place while visiting New England. Its calm, wintry American landscape seems morally clear and ancient, yet it makes Buenos Aires more present in memory. As evening deepens, time feels uneven: the present stretches, the past contracts, and the speaker mentally returns to his native city's streets. The poem treats travel as an experience of simultaneous belonging and distance.
Read Complete Analyses
Feel free to be first to leave comment.