The wheeling of the stars is not infinite
And the tiger is one of the forms that return,
But we, remote from chance of hazard,
Believed we were exiled in a time outworn,
Time when nothing can happen.
The universe, the tragic universe, was not here
And maybe should be looked for somewhere else;
I hatched a humble mythology of fencing
walls and knives
And Ricardo thought of his drovers.

We did not know that time to come held a lightning bolt;
We did not forsee the shame, the fire, and the fearful
night of the Alliance;
Nothing told us that Argentine history would be thrust
out to walk the streets,
History, indignation, love,
The multitudes like the sea, the name of Córdoba,
The flavor of the real and the incredible, the
horror and the glory.

[From Dreamtigers, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Harold Morland]