As for the horses, we broke them in for ourselves from out of the herd that ran wild, so we can be confident that they didn’t belong to anyone else before, the two mares in foal which we were able to tempt into the gully with fresh grass before we blocked the exit, and then patiently waited the years as the young ones grew strong on the water meadow grass, far from the prying jealous eyes of the cattlemen and bankers, Or even MacKay himself, I think, In this instance he is quite capable of looking after himself for the time being. Yes, like it has been said, Here even the beggars ride on horseback.
Out on the pampas, where it is dry and hot, and the wind blows without ceasing, the days in the saddle are long, and my friend says that there are times when he doesn’t know who he is, or where he is heading, It is east we are going, not west, I remind him. Or that he has forgotten his name, and some time ago the thought came to me and I began to think of him as the ‘dust poet’, and I have even tried calling him that a few times, following the trail of Borges’s line ‘cuando el polvo sea el polvo’ and Francisco de Quevedo, the last line of whose poem Amor constante más allá de la muerte runs ‘Polvo séran, mas polvo enamorado’.
Dust they will be, but dust that is in love.
I don’t much like the translation given here, but is that enough adventure to be going on with? He is also beginning to look the part more and more, the bleached white stubble and hair, and deepening lines on his face, and look in his austere eyes that remind me of the pictures I have seen of Macedonio in later life. And his bulging saddle-bags, it is not polvo-de-angel dust, but another kind of treasure, and I tell him that he should publish his poems as a collection, Out here far from the city who would read them, he says turning his back to the wind.
Later then, when we get to the city, I think, and he meets her – broken hearts to go with broken bodies – at the places, whose names I have also overheard and remembered, like ‘The Poet in the City’.