Photo: Julianrod
Buenos Aires CityPoem: “Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires” by José Luis Borges
The mythical founding of Buenos Aires
And was it along this torpid muddy river
that the prows came to found my native city?
The little painted boats must have suffered the steep surf
among the root-clumps of the horse-brown current.
Pondering well, let us suppose that the river
was blue then like an extension of the sky,
with a small red star inset to mark the spot
where Juan Diaz* fasted and the Indians dined.
But for sure a thousand men and other thousands
arrived across a sea that was five moons wide,
still infested with mermaids and sea serpents
and magnetic boulders that sent the compass wild.
On the coast they put up a few ramshackle huts
and slept uneasily. This, they claim, in the Riachuelo,
but that is a story dreamed up in Boca.
It was really a city block in my district - Palermo.
A whole square block, but set down in open country,
attended by dawns and rains and hard southeasters,
identical to that block which still stands in my neighbourhood:
Guatemala, Serrano, Paraguay, Gurruchaga.
A general store pink as the back of a playing card
shone bright; in the back there was poker talk.
The corner bar flowered into life as a local bully,
already cock of his walk, resentful, tough.
The first barrel organ teetered over the horizon
with its clumsy progress, its habaneras, its wop.
The cart-shed wall was unanimous for YRIGOYEN.
Some piano was banging out tangos by Saborido.
A cigar store perfumed the desert like a rose.
The afternoon had established its yesterdays,
and men took on together an illusory past.
Only one thing was missing - the street had no other side.
Hard to believe Buenos Aires had any beginning.
I feel it to be as eternal as air and water.
Jorge Luis Borges, 1929
Translated by Alastair Reid from the blog Spanish Poems.
About the author
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was an Argentine writer. Best-known in the English speaking world for his short stories and fictional essays, Borges was also a poet, critic, translator and man of so-called "wisdom". He was influenced by authors such as Dante Alighieri, Miguel de Cervantes, Franz Kafka, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Schopenhauer and G. K. Chesterton.
His first book was Fervor de Buenos Aires -- Passion for Buenos Aires (1923). "In my dreams, I never leave Buenos Aires," he once wrote, though his dreams often were anguished ones, as expressed in one of several poems called "Buenos Aires":
"And the city, now, is like a map
Of my humiliations and failures;
From this door, I have seen the twilights
And at this marble pillar I have waited in vain."
> NY Times article about the influence of Borges on Buenos Aires
Text in Spanish
Fundación Mítica de Buenos Aires
¿Y fue por este río de sueñera y barro
que las proas vinieron a fundarme la patria?
Irían a los tumbos los barquitos pintados
entre los camalotes de la corriente zaina.
Pensando bien la cosa, supondremos que el río
era azulejo entonces como oriundo del cielo
con su estrellita roja para marcar el sitio
en que ayunó Juan Díaz y los indios comieron.
Lo cierto es que mil hombres y otros mil arribaron
por un mar que tenía cinco lunas de anchura
y aún estaba poblado de sirenas y endriagos
y de piedras imanes que enloquecen a la brújula.
Prendieron unos ranchos trémulos en la costa,
durmieron extrañados. Dicen que en el Riachuelo,
pero son embelecos fraguados en el Boca.
Fue una manzana entera y en mi barrio: en Palermo
Una manzana entera pero en mitá del campo
presenciada de auroras y lluvias y sudestadas.
La manzana pareja que persiste en mi barrio:
Guatemala, Serrano, Paraguay, Gurruchaga.
Un almacén rosado como revés de naipe
brilló y en la trastienda conversaron un truco;
el almacén rosado floreció en un compadre,
ya patrón de la esquina, ya resentido y duro.
El primer organito salvaba el horizonte
con su achacoso porte, su habanera y su gringo.
El corralón seguro ya opinaba: YRIGOYEN,
algún piano mandaba tangos de Saborido.
Una cigarrería sahumó como una rosa
el desierto. La tarde se había ahondado en ayeres,
los hombres compartieron una pasado ilusorio.
Sólo faltó una cosa: la vereda de enfrente.
A mi se me hace cuento que empezó Buenos Aires:
La juzgo tan eterna como el agua y el aire.
Jorge Luis Borges, 1929
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