Simón Carbajal
by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) [translated by Robert Mezey]
Antelo's fields, 1890 or so,
My father had charge of him. Perhaps they exchanged
A few sparing and long-forgotten words.
He remembered nothing of the man but this:
The back of his dark-skinned left hand crisscrossed
With scratches--claw marks. Back then, on the ranch,
Everyone worked out his own destiny:
This one broke horses, that one was a wrangler,
Another man could rope like nobody else--
Simón Carbajal was the jaguar man.
Whenever a jaguar preyed upon the sheepfold
Or someone heard her growling in the darkness,
Carbajal would track her into the mountains.
He took a knife with him, and a few dogs.
And when at last he closed with her in a thicket
He would set the dogs on her. The tawny beast
As like as not sprang suddenly on the man
Shaking a poncho draped over his left arm,
Both shield and a muleta. The white belly
Was unprotected and the animal
Felt the knife as it entered her and felt
The steel burning inside her as she died.
The duel was fatal, and it was infinite.
He went on killing always the same jaguar
Which was immortal. Don't let this surprise you
Too much. His destiny is yours, and mine,
Except for the fact that our jaguar takes forms
That change continuously. Call it Hatred,
Or Love, or Hazard, call it Every Moment.