Transience
Borges, like most poets, identifies a great deal of transience with his poetry. In "Limits" he ponders how human relationships ebb and flow. A person may be in your life one day and the next leave forever. The result is a constant battle with uncertainty in which a person is forced to choose to trust someone knowing that person will inevitably disappoint, but in the very challenges of relationship and its temporary nature is the real beauty and value of it. People are required to love in spite of pain, willing accepting that pain upon themselves for the sake of knowing the other person.
Similarly, "Elegy for a Park" reflects upon the continuous flow of time. There is a nostalgia in this poem which is more prominent than in other poems of Borges. Considering the ruins of a Roman park, Borges discusses how history is just another name for time which is the only real force that humans fear. In a cycle of transience, the old and the new are constantly being reflected in one another, but they never are quite allowed to remain stationary.
Loss
Again, this poetry collection possesses a strong attitude of grief. Many of the poems focus on the idea of loss, from a variety of angles. In "Limits" loss is found in the unknown of the future. Although a person may choose something today, they must choose it accepting that the future may eliminate this option tomorrow and thus leave the person grieving their decision. "Elegy for a Park" reflects upon the loss of history. As time progresses, the present becomes the past and there is a profound grief in this fact. The grandeur of days past and accomplishments past must inevitably fade and be lost to time itself.
Finally, in "Sleep" Borges laments the loss of freedom that is found in dreaming. As the dreamer awakens, he experiences grief for he recognizes all in a moment that he is awakening and losing whatever bliss and innocence and imagination he has been enjoying in sleep. More importantly, awakening from a dream, a person usually forgets the dream entirely, which is a unique kind of grief because that dream belongs entirely to the person and their imagination but it cannot be kept.
Intrigue
In his poetry, Borges often alludes to this idea of intrigue without ever naming it. He ponders the human experience in all its mystery and frequently leaves his readers with unanswered questions because they are truly unanswerable. In "Sleep" this looks like the elusive dream. A person's sleeping consciousness is speaking to that person, revealing things about themselves, yet the sleep state yields to the waking state and is lost. Whatever progress has been made through dreams must be submitted to the unknown once more, allowing only hope of subconscious progress to remain without any tangible evidence. This is the type of intrigue that preoccupies Borges' creative mind. He is continually rolling around the fuzzy edges of human experience for which there is no proof and consequently no closure.
