The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

And then I started to think again about Stridentopolis, about its museums and bars, its open-air theaters and newspapers, its schools and its dormitories for traveling poets, dormitories where Borges and Tristan Tzara, Huidobro and André Breton would sleep. And I saw mi general talking to us again. I saw him making plans, I saw him drinking, standing at the window, I saw him receiving Cesárea Tinajero, who had come in with a letter of recommendation from Manuel, I saw him reading a little book by Tablada, maybe the one where Don José Juan says: “Under fearful skies / keening for the only star / the song of the nightingale.” Which is as if to say, boys, I said, that I saw our struggles and dreams all tangled up in the same failure, and that failure was called joy.