Borges - The Chess

                           I
Set in their studious corners, the players
move the gradual pieces. Until dawn
the chessboard keeps them in it’s strict confinement
with its two colors set at daggers drawn.

Within the game itself the forms give off
their magic rules: Homeric castle, knight
swift to attack, queen warlike, king decisive,
slanted bishop, and attacking pawns.

Eventually, when the players have withdrawn,
when time itself has finally consumed them,
the ritual will certainly not be done.

It was in the East this war took fire.
Today the whole earth is its theater.
Like the game of love, this game goes on forever.

                           II
Faint-hearted king, sly bishop, ruthless queen,
straight forward castle, and deceitful pawn -
over the checkered black and white terrain
they seek out and begin their armed campaign.

They do not know it is the players hand
that dominates and guides their destiny.
They do not know an adamantine fate
controls their will and the battle plan.

The player too is captive of caprice
(the words are Omar’s) on another ground
where black nights alternate with whiter days.

God moves the player, he in turn the piece.
But what god beyond God begins the round
of dust and time and sleep and agonies?

--Jorge Luis Borges – Selected Poems

Taking the previous quatrain from FitzGerald's Rubaiyat, where the poet talks about Gods playing a game with this world of ours as an instrument/dice for their own caprice & amusement, this poem by Borges takes that idea forward. Here king, queen and countless other pawns fight it out with all their plots and their honor and valor to outdo the other on the checkered battlefield unaware that hand of the player guides their destiny. Likewise the player plays out his life and actions on the checkered arena we call night and day. Like the pawns unaware, the player play out their moves as played out by the Gods who moves the pieces around on this chess board (as fate has willed it). Borges in his true self, puts a infinite regression into this by suggesting "what God beyond God" start the opening move. Who moves the Gods in the cosmic chessboard. Maybe Gods are itself some pieces on this game worked around by some other higher power. How do we know that God is up there commanding us to do this and do that and having all the answers. Maybe He/She is up there as confused as we are or worse, not being in control!