El laberinto de Borges 

Lo efimero como paradoja, como sinónimo de lo eterno,

contradicción y ejemplo, reducción y efemérides del tiempo,

de lo infinitamente grande a lo inmensamente pequeño.

En pocas palabras, lo que todos los alfabetos y todos los idiomas ignoran,

en resumidas cuentas, lo que cabe en el ábaco y no en los libros

la solución del enigma perfecto que se oculta en toda secuencia numérica conocida o ignorada.

El laberinto matemático que Borges amaba, en su lógica, su poesia soñada,

nunca fué su busqueda el enigma del idioma, nunca lo dicho o escrito

mas el juego, el azar, la Cábala, aceleraban su sangre e iluminaban su ceguera,

daban paso al genio, agitando millones de reflejos en un solo par de espejos.

 

Because of Science

By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Wall Street Journal

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Adapted from the Wall Street Journal series “Lessons of the Pandemic Year”

Many people who love their high-tech smartphones refused to trust scientists when it came to Covid.

What I learned from the pandemic year is that when faced with a common enemy—an enemy of the entire human species—we regressed to basal, primitive instincts rather than band together to fight. This was a test run for an alien invasion, and we failed. I had naively hoped that the same tribal urges that pit human against human could be harnessed to pit all humans against the killer virus. But that did not happen.

We have apparently passed through a portal where pseudoscience, anti-science, fear-of-science and science-denial all thrive in our civilization. Where systems of cultural, political and religious belief override the objective truths established by the methods and tools of science.

If the enterprise of science were some newfangled, untested way of knowing, one might empathize with these sentiments. But the people who battle against science are the same ones who, for instance, wield and embrace their pocket-sized smartphones, which merge state-of-the-art engineering, mathematics, information technology and space physics. It’s an educator’s conundrum indeed.

So perhaps what I really learned during the pandemic year is that science needs better marketing—refined and persistent—so that no one will ever again take its discoveries for granted.

Imagine the ad campaigns: We fly through the air at 500 miles per hour, seated in a cushioned chair, inside a 100-ton metal tube, 30,000 feet above the ground—because of science. We communicate with practically anyone we’ve ever met, in an instant, no matter where they are in the world—because of science. We obtain immediate access to all the compiled knowledge of our species, at our fingertips—because of science. Neither you nor your mother died in childbirth—because of science. Most people used to die at 65 or 45 or younger, but we don’t anymore—because of science. And we are able to glean accurate insights about Earth’s past, present and future, especially its climate, our ecosystem and the forces we exert upon them—because of science.

In that imagined future, Covid-19 would never have become a pandemic. Everyone would have understood the risks of transmission. And the bastions of anti-maskers, thinking they cannot spread the virus to others, would look as silly as a swimming pool with a designated “Peeing Section.”

Until then, let’s not forget the efforts of lab scientists. Nobody writes stories about not dying by not contracting Covid-19. So maybe it’s time to praise the researchers who developed vaccines in record time. If heroes are those who save lives, then they are superheroes, for they have saved the lives of millions—because of science.

De ojos abiertos.

De ojos abiertos.

Despierto, de ojos abiertos, veo

la indefinida inmensidad de los días por venir

el peso infinito de tantas cosas por hacer

la enumeración de los sueños y las noches

y toda la suma de aquí, allí y ahoras

tejiendo la trama de una vida vivida y por vivir.

Y con tanto y tan poco, amores, pasiones,

deseos y promesas,

los libros leidos, palabras, poemas, imágenes,

son las cosas que uno atesora, recuerda,

signos en el cielo, huellas,

todo un mar de estelas imborrables,

olor a mar, olor a tierra.

Extiendo una mano buscando un consuelo,

un precario entendimiento del vasto argumento

que sostiene los pedazos cuánticos de este Universo

y solo encuentro motivos personales, egoismos,

retazos de una conciencia ajena a toda existencia,

voces lejanas, abismos del tiempo,

lo que fué, lo que está, lo que viene.

No soy nada y espero...

We depart.

We depart tonight, destiny uncertain,

we'll wait for the nightly mist and disappear in the dark.

Cast away alone and lost in the distant horizon,

riding the uncertain waves of this tumultuous sea,

we endure and slowly progress to faraway shores.

What is there to loose, but the dragging routine of daily life?

Not so brave, not even a lowly hero, just trembly human nature

keep us on course across the open ocean,

forcing our way forward searching for a friendly port.

Can never turn back, the days are cast in stone

the shadows follows and menacing looms the past.

What is there to take? Just the brightly light of the rising new day.

Sombras de sombras.

Ya saben de mi búsqueda,

de los caminos recorridos y de las palabras imposibles,

los espejos que nos miran y los laberintos descifrados.

Hablo de amores imposibles, amores perdidos y amores olvidados,

tropiezos y empujones, susurros del pasado.

Repito lo que hago, lo que digo, avanzo en círculos y nunca llego,

sin escape, sin regreso a ningún lado.

Lo que espero no llega y lo que busco no encuentro,

si golpeo no contestan, si llamo no hay respuesta,

ya cansado me detengo, al borde de mi mismo y no me veo.

Me acuesto a descansar, interminablemente,

a la sombra de las sombras, donde no hay oscuridad,

bajo el mismísimo centro de la luz infinita.

The dark side.

The growing ignorance running the earth
like dust, covering it all, blown by the wind
and the breath of unsuspecting souls.
What is the word of the dogma, the road of the lost,
the righteous painful delivery to the truth,
denial, the shallow deception of the eternal fraud.
Shadows, lurking in darkness,
haunting the days of memories past,
regrets, pains, delusions, altogether the frame
of unrepentant minds.
So the sorrow takes a firm grip on the fragile world,
as weakened hands cannot hold us any longer
from sharpened shards of timeless glass
and we heavily crash the waves of immemorial seas.
There are no happy endings to mostly tragic lives,
just a glimpse of eternity that will never realize.

De los males de este mundo

Descargan su furiosa violencia con lanzas y palos

cuatro jinetes de dorada armadura.

Escarnían la carne y desnudan los huesos ,

se ensañan en la herida y se resarcen en el sufrimiento.

Cuatro jinetes, cuatro

al galope en el aire fétido de la borrascosa y oscura mañana

pisoteando los inermes cadáveres de un enemigo eternamente derrotado.

Avanzan sin prisa por las yermas llanuras

a la espera del grito, del llanto desesperado.

No son un mal augurio, ni son mensajeros de ningún destino secreto,

ni tampoco ejecutan un plan tenebroso tejido por el mismísimo Diablo.

Cuatro jinetes, solo cuatro?

Se aventuran en el mundo a plena luz, en pleno día,

ya no temen ser arrasados por las hordas de hambrientos y miserables,

de ellos se elimentan, con ellos enarbolan sus harapientos estandartes de mercenarios y canallas.

Su intención y su justicia solo vale el peso de su oro,

su camino, la ignominosa ignorancia,

su misión, la pervertida miseria,

su justificación, la prepotencia y la fuerza,

y sus vestiduras, la mas infinita arrogancia.