Ajedrez [English translation]

I

In their grave corner, the players

rule the slow pieces. The board

delays them until dawn in it's severe

scope in which two colors hate each other.

Inside, magical rigors irradiate

the shapes: homeric tower, light

horse, armed queen, hindmost king,

oblique bishop and aggresor peon.

When the players are gone,

when time has consumed them,

the rite will certainly not have ceased.

In the east this war lit up

whose amphitheater is now the whole Earth.

Like the other one, this game is infinite.

II

Tenuous king, biased bishop, fierce

queen, direct tower and cunning peon

over the black and white of the path

they search and wage their armed battle.

They don't know that the indicated hand

of the player governs their destiny,

they don't know that an adamantine rigor

holds their will and their journey.

The player is also a prisoner

(the statement is Omar's) of another board

of black nights and white days.

God moves the player and he, the piece.

Which God behind God starts the plot

of dust and time and sleep and agony?

• Artist:Jorge Luis Borges