Who wrote it? What can I use to keep you?

"What can I use to keep you" is a modern poem written by Argentine poet Jorges Luis Borges.

What can I use to keep you?

I give you poor streets, desperate sunsets and the moon in the broken suburbs.

I will give you a sad look at the lonely moon for a long time.

I give you my dead ancestors, and people commemorate their ghosts with marble:

My father's father died at the border of Buenos Aires. Two bullets went through his chest. He died with a beard, and the soldiers wrapped his body in cowhide. My mother's grandfather, who led 300 soldiers in Peru at the age of 24, is now a ghost on horseback.

I give you all the insight I can include in the book, all the masculinity or humor I can have in my life.

I give you the loyalty of someone you never trusted.

I give you the core that I try to preserve-the core that I don't make words and sentences, that I don't trade with my dreams, and that I'm not moved by time, joy and adversity.

I give you the memory of a yellow rose, which you saw one night many years before you were born.

I'll give you your own explanation, your own theory, your own real and amazing news.

I give you my loneliness, my darkness and my inner desire; I tried to impress you with confusion, danger and failure.

1934