Coffee with Borges

PROGRAM NOTE

The text, written by the composer, is loosely inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' lecture on blindness.

Coffee with Borges

An old man, wearing tinted glasses,
Lightly fingering a leash attached to a turtle
That he found in a cistern on the sidewalk
Of a side street in Buenos Aires, appears.

For a long time, we three are silent.
(The tally of those present includes the turtle.)
Then the old man gestures to a cafe table—
We sit, and he begins to speak.
The blind cannot see black.
Yellow and blue and green
have been faithful to me.
The blind cannot see black.

So much misunderstanding by everyone,
even by Shakespeare—
"The night this; the night that.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah."
The turtle nods in agreement.
Blindness seems a lack
until it becomes an instrument.

A young boy delivers coffee.
He ferries it in cups of pale blue porcelain.
A city bus flickers past.
A tanager directs the traffic.
Hands and tongues of a young couple
Darting around dark continents of limb and shadow
Do a brief routine then disappear...

Some would say a cruel joke by God who,
How did I put it “granted me books
And blindness at one touch”.
But other worlds emerge:
Ancient languages, Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic,
Words of my ancestors,
A memory full of poems,
Sheets of laughter shared
With my beautiful students,
The sound of rain resounding
On the wide wet I think they
Are pink stones
Outside the open window.

The old man takes off his glasses.

— Gabriel Kahane, 2017

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