In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

406 CODES COLLAPSED
raphy of the city, including the names of its neighborhoods and streets,
politicians and musicians:
They set up a few rickety huts on the coast,
and slept at a distance. They say that in Riachuelo,
though, plots were hatched at the rivermouth.
That was an entire block in my neighborhood: in Palermo.
But an entire block in the middle of a field
exposed to the dawns, the rains, and the winds.
The block seems to be still in my neighborhood:
Guatemala, Serrano, Paraguay, Gurruchaga.
The neighborhoods already opted for "Yrigoyen."
Some piano flung out the tangos of Saborido.
(Borges, 95-96)
And in the final six verses, this overlapping of the city's Past and Present,
this loss of temporal structure, makes Buenos Aires as eternal as nature.
A cigar case perfumed the desert
like a rose. The evening had sunk back into yesterdays.
The men shared an illusory past.
Only one thing was missing: the sidewalk opposite.
I think it is an illusion that Buenos Aires had a beginning.
I find it as eternal as the water and the air.
Related Entries
Assembly Lines, Bars, Endurance, Reporters, Six-Day Races, Strikes,
Timepieces, Authenticity vs. Artificiality, Center vs. Periphery, Present vs.
Past, Immanence = Transcendence (Death)
References
Associated Students of Stanford University, The 1926 Quad.
Johannes R. Becher, Maschinenrhythmen. Berlin, 1926.
Berliner Borsen-Zeitung.
Franz Blei, "Bemerkungen zum Theater" (1926). In Anton Kaes, ed., Weimarer