Christopher, Thanks so much for posting this, which gives me the opportunity to draw the contrast. Here’s the Mezey-Barnes:
Over along Maldonado
That today runs blind and obscure,
Where Carriego celebrated
The barrios of the poor,
Back in a grape-arbored patio
Past a door left partly ajar,
Where nights listened in on the passion
Of a lone, lovesick guitar,
There is a chest, and inside it,
Glittering in its sleep
A knife, among other objects
Time doesn’t care to keep.
It belonged to Chileno Suarez
--Saverio was really his name—
A good man to have for elections
Or any other game.
Little boys full of mischief
Would look for it as they played
To try on a tender fingertip
The razor edge of the blade.
This knife that once must have entered
The flesh of many a man
Is now laid away in darkness,
Awaiting a certain hand,
Which is dust. The sun gilds the window
With a pale, yellowish hue.
Through that window, through years, through houses,
Knife, I am looking at you.
As a group the Milongas excited me more than anything in the book. I’ll close with a little tribute to Borges and Mezey, written in the first flush of enthusiasm and in similar measure. I post this not out of any pretense to mastery, but as an example of the influence true Mastery can have.
Casa Abandonada
Though he labors in the shadows,
the library of his mind
is a corridor of windows
whose occupant is blind.
The manse is Argentina
but a mirror gives on Spain
as a gaucho’s ocarina
moans through a broken pane.
Cobwebs trail from ceilings
over lovers and their bowers.
Mice run on the railings;
a cracked clock-face glowers.
Fingering newel or plinth,
the blind man cannot see
his way through this labyrinth.
Neither, my friend, can we.
[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited February 18, 2001).]
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