Things That Might Have Been
I think of things that weren’t, but might have been. The treatise on Saxon myths Bede never wrote. The inconceivable work Dante might have had a glimpse of, As soon as he’d corrected the Comedy’s last verse. History without the afternoons of the Cross and the hemlock. History without the face of Helen. Man without the eyes that gave us the moon. On Gettysburg’s three days, victory for the South. The love we never shared. The wide empire the Vikings chose not to found. The world without the wheel or the rose. The view John Donne held of Shakespeare. The other horn of the Unicorn. The fabled Irish bird that lights on two trees at once. The child I never had.
Things That Might Have Been - meaning Summary
The Weight of Unrealized Lives
The poem imagines an inventory of absences: unwritten books, altered histories, unrealized inventions, mythical impossibilities, and private losses. Borges treats these alternatives not as simple fantasies but as parts of reality's shadow, suggesting that what never happened can remain emotionally and intellectually present. The final image of an unborn child turns the broad meditation on history and culture into an intimate acknowledgment of personal regret.
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