Atlas and Los Conjurados Summary

Only one prose poem, "My Last Tiger," is extracted from the volume Atlas. In it, Borges affirms that tigers always have been in his life, and he cannot remember whether the first one was from a book or in the zoo. He discusses the many tigers he has observed in poetry and art, and says the last one, of flesh and blood, was in a zoo without bars called Animal World. It licked his face, for which he offers thanks. In the volume titled Los Conjurados, "Christ on the Cross" depicts the feet of Jesus touching the earth, the beard on his severe, Jewish face grazing his chest. Christ thinks about God, humans, religion, his own death, and he whimpers and dies. The poet asks of what use it is to him that this man suffered, if...