The Gaucho MartÃn Fierro and MartÃn Fierro's Return

'Some verses flow on out of men like headstreams course through a canal.
The same holds true for mine, old pal-
though I can't say they're worth a lick,
they still pour out of me real quick,
like sheep escapin' a corral.'

José Hernández's long narrative poems The Gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and Martín Fierro's Return (1879) relate the often harrowing story of a gaucho's misfortunes against the backdrop of Argentina's nation-building a few decades after its independence from Spain. The first poem...