deep down, you want to be yourself

[from] Jorge Luis Borges' Shakespeare's Memory (published in the New Yorker (Apr. 1998)

       I had hypothesized that the images of that wondrous memory would be primarily visual. Such was not the case. Days later, as I was shaving I spoke into the mirror a string of words that puzzled me; a colleague informed me that they were from Chaucer's "A.B.C." O…