我用什么才能留住你？
我给你贫穷的街道、绝望的日落
破败郊区的月亮。
我给你一个久久地望着孤月的人的悲哀。
我给你我已死去的先辈
人们用大理石纪念他们的幽灵：
在布宜诺斯艾利斯边境阵亡的我父亲的父亲，两颗子弹射穿了他的胸膛，
绪着胡子的他死去了，
士兵们用牛皮裹起他的尸体；
我母亲的祖父——时年二十四岁——在秘鲁率领三百名士兵冲锋，
如今都成了消失的马背上的幽灵。
我给你我写的书中所包含的一切悟力、我生活中所能有的男子气概或幽默。
我给你一个从未有过信仰的人的忠诚。
我给你我设法保全的我自己的核心——不营字造句，不和梦想交易，不被时间、欢乐和逆境触动的核心。
我给你，早在你出生前多年的一个傍晚看到的一朵黄玫瑰的记忆。
我给你你对自己的解释，
关于你自己的理论，
你自己的真实而惊人的消息。
我给你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饥渴；我试图用困惑、危险、失败来打动你。

What Can I Hold You With?
　　Jorge Luis Borges (1934)
　　What can I hold you with?
　　I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the
　　moon of the jagged suburbs.
　　I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked
　　long and long at the lonely moon.
　　I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts
　　that living men have honoured in bronze:
　　my father's father killed in the frontier of
　　Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
　　bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in
　　the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather
　　--just twentyfour-- heading a charge of
　　three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on
　　vanished horses.
　　I offer you whatever insight my books may hold,
　　whatever manliness or humour my life.
　　I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never
　　been loyal.
　　I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved,
　　somehow --the central heart that deals not
　　in words, traffics not with dreams, and is
　　untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
　　I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at
　　sunset, years before you were born.
　　I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
　　yourself, authentic and surprising news of
　　yourself.
　　I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
　　hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
　　with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.