Dr. Wilbur Smith

Things 

My cane, my pocket change, this ring of keys,

The obedient lock, the belated notes

The few days left to me will not find time

To read, the deck of cards, the tabletop,

A book, and crushed in its pages the withered

Violet, monument to an afternoon.

The mirror in the west where a red sunrise

Blazes its illusion. How many things,

Files, doorsills, atlases, wine glasses, nails,

Serve us like slaves who never say a word,

Blind and so mysteriously reserved.

They will endure beyond our vanishing;

And they will never know that we have gone. 

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

translated  by Stephen Kessler