II. Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires (English Translation by Alastair Reid): And allow me to quote this poem by Jorge Luis Borges titled 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 neighborhood: 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. For it is true that we deem eternal what was before us and will continue to be after our death… I whole heartedly recommend reading Borges’ “Evaristo Carriego” in which, using as an excuse the figure of the author, he relates the city’s shaping and, specially, that of his neighborhood, Palermo. He places there a character, el guapo (the handsome one), hero of a genre that will beget so many underground stories… in lun- fardo (Buenos Aires’ slang). All this will one day be a chapter in one of my new books that will compose those Arqui-lecturas. t4118