Ah, proper verse! These tanka are intriguing, because Borges seems to have adopted an operatic syllable count, something akin in Spanish maybe to the double vowel in Japanese.
Sad the rain
on marble falls,
sad to be earth.
Sad not being days
of men, dream, dawn.
Obviously a tricky but delightful translating job; Reid must modulate to "wistful" in his first line.
I would like to post my favorite of the Borges Milongas I know, the very familiar "Milonga of Albornoz". Again, this isn't Reid's translation, or even Di Giovanni's:
Someone already counted the days,
Someone already knows the hour,
Someone with Whom there are
Neither premotions nor demur.
Albornoz walks by whistling
An Entre Ríos milonga;
Under the brim of his chambergo
His eyes see the morning,
The morning of this day
Of eighteen-hundred ninety;
Down in the Retiro
They've already stopped counting
Loves and cardgames
Till dawn and tangles
Of iron with sergeants,
Kith and strangers.
Well-sworn amongst them are
More than one tough and more than one rogue;
At a streetcorner on the Southside
A knife is waiting for him.
Not one knife but three,
Before day's lightening,
They were all on top of him
And the man was himself defending.
Somebody's steel entered his chest,
Nor did his face once move;
Alejo Albornoz died
As if it was nothing at all to him.
I think that he would like
To know presently his story
Continues in a milonga. Time
Is oblivion and memory.
[This message has been edited by Christopher Mulrooney (edited February 21, 2001).]
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