Emily Dickinson Is Not Borges Poem by Shalom Freedman

EMILY DICKINSON IS NOT BORGES

Emily Dickinson is not Borges
And Borges is not Kafka
And Kafka is not Dickens
And no one is Shakespeare-

Each one is only one self
Except for those who are many selves
And those who are many selves
Do not know
Who they themselves are-

Lear is not Falstaff
And Falstaff is not Hamlet
And Hamlet is not Shakespeare
And Shakespeare is not Donne-

No one is anyone but themselves
And even those who are really ‘someone'
Are not all the others who also are-

And we who are nothing at all?
What are we?
We are not nothing at all.

We are not great
And no one will remember our names
But we are still here now
Reading Borges and Dickenson and Kafka and Shakespeare
And wondering how and why
There are those in a world of their own
With names of their own
They themselves will never completely know.