这首诗是作者写的Two English Poems to a woman中的第二首。作者是豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯(- Jorge Luis Borges（1899-1986），阿根廷詩人、小說家和散文家，他本人也是一位翻譯家，除母語西班牙語外，還精通英語、德語、法語和古諾爾斯語。1961年，博爾赫斯與《等待戈多》的作者塞繆爾·貝克特分享瞭福門托獎（Prix Fermentor），這是他的第一個國際獎。60年代，隨著拉美文學潮和馬爾克斯的著作《百年孤獨》的問世，同為拉丁作家的博爾赫斯也獲得瞭更為矚目的國際聲譽。1979年，博爾赫斯獲得西班牙國文學界最高獎塞萬提斯獎，不過他未能像馬爾克斯一樣得到諾貝爾文學獎，一說這或許與他的政治立場有關。
关于作者的分析和生平作品见链接：https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/jorge-luis-borges
“I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.”这是我最喜欢的一句。也许诗人真的是世界上最会写情书的一类人，他们的细腻笔触和美妙语言，让人用心去读和品味的东西总比用耳朵听来的甜蜜多一些。过于敏感的诗人（或作家）也总是造成他们自身的困境，我觉得这类人总是无法享受到简单的快乐，因为他们总要深一层次的去思考。
原文附上：What Can I Hold You with?
Jorge Luis Borges
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 marble: my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiersin the hide of a cow; my mother’s grandfather -just twenty four- 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.
我用什麼才能留住你
豪爾赫·路易斯·博爾赫斯
我給你瘦落的街道、絕望的落日、荒郊的月亮。
我給你一個久久地望著孤月的人的悲哀。
我給你我已死去的祖輩，後人們用大理石祭奠的先魂：我父親的父親，陣亡於佈宜諾斯艾利斯的邊境，兩顆子彈射穿瞭他的兇膛，死的時候蓄著胡子，屍體被士兵們用牛皮裹起；我母親的祖父——那年才二十四歲——在秘魯率領三百人沖鋒，如今都成瞭消失的馬背上的亡魂。
我給你我的書中所能蘊含的一切悟力，以及我生活中所能有的男子氣概和幽默。
我給你一個從未有過信仰的人的忠誠。
我給你我設法保全的我自己的核心——不營字造句，不和夢交易，不被時間、歡樂和逆境觸動的核心。
我給你早在你出生前多年的一個傍晚看到的一朵黃玫瑰的記憶。
我給你關於你生命的詮釋，關於你自己的理論，你的真實而驚人的存在。
我給你我的寂寞、我的黑暗、我心的饑渴；我在嘗試賄賂你，用無常，用危險，用失敗。
这里也附上原诗作中的第一首：
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.