Juan López and John Ward


Serbal Vidrio #latin american

Part of a series on latin american poems

Originally Written by Jurge Luis Borges

Chance found them in a strange age.

The planet had been parceled up into different countries, each provisioned with loyalties, beloved memories, and an undoubtedly heroic past; with rights, grievances, and peculiar mythologies; with brazen forefathers, anniversaries, demagogues, and symbols. This division, the work of cartographers, made wars auspicious.

López was born in the city that stands by that immobile river; Ward, on the outskirts of the city through which walked Father Brown. He had studied Spanish to read the Quijote.

The other professed a love for Conrad, who had been revealed to him in a classroom on Viamonte Street.

They might have been friends, but they saw each other face to face only once, on a pair of too-famous islands, and each of the two was Cain, and each one Abel.

They were interred together, left to snow and decay.

The facts that I recount took place in a time that we cannot understand.