Milonga of Don Nicanor Paredes

Let there be a strum, and now

With your permission felicitous,

I am singing, gentlemen,

To Don Nicanor Paredes.

Never I saw him stiff in death,

Never I saw him even ill;

I see him with a solid step

Treading his fiefdom Palermo still.

Slightly gray his moustache is

But in his eyes a certain shine

And not distant from his heart

The little bulge made by a knife.

The knife that took part in a death

Which he didn’t really like

To speak of; some disgrace or other

At the track or over dice.

In the atrium, rather. He was a boss,

Unless the tale is just not so,

Back there in the brave times

Of the eighteen-nineties or so.

Hard and straight the head of hair

And that bull’s integument;

The chalina over his shoulder

And the gold ring opulent.

Among his men there surely were

Many of bravery serene;

Juan Muraña and that Suarez

Known by his other name, The Chilean.

When among these nasty people

Nasty doings would break out,

He would stop them with a fist,

Or with a whip or with a shout.

A man of even temperament

In good luck or in mischance;

“In the house where you buy soap

He who doesn’t fall must dance.”

He knew how to tell events,

To the beat of the vihuela,

In the houses of Junín

And the markets of Adela.

Now he’s dead at last and with him

How much recollection goes

Of that Palermo all but lost

Of dagger and wasteland in the throes.

Now he’s dead and I say to myself:

Don Nicanor, how with you it stands,

In a heaven with no horses

Nor wagers, bank shots and pat hands?

Jorge Luis Borges