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The Gold of the Tigers: Selected Later Poems

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In his prologue to this volume Borges speaks about how having lived out the seventy years the Psalmist speaks of as full life he now goes on "plying familiar skills, with an occasional mild variation,and with tedious repetitions" But for those of us who know and love the work of Borges the minor variations are not tedious at all, but rather enrichments in our knowledge of this writer of writers. Borges surprises in the prologue here by citing Browning and Blake as those two who have come closest to realizing his poetic ideal of making 'every moment, every act of existence, poetic'. He also surprises by having just a hint of criticism for Whitman 'whose careful enumerations do not always rise above a kind of crude cataloguing'.
One senses here a bit of Harold Bloom's 'agon' with the student trying to overcome the master. But here I am afraid Borges does not truly succeed, for in spite of all as poet Whitman cannot truly be contended with even by one who brings mirrors and daggers and gold tigers to do so.
In any case poems such as 'Susanna Bombal' '(And behind the myths and masks, her soul , always alone.) 'The Blind Man' ( Only shades of yellow stay with me/ and I can see only to look on nightmares) 'The Search' ' 1971' (Two men walk on the surface of the moon./ Others will later. What are words to do?' ) 'Things' constitute more poems which are often too stories, parables, essays work of an invariably interesting master.