From a conversation with Jorge Luis Borges on the translations of his books and poetry, conducted in 1982 by the New Orleans Review and published this month by Bloomsbury in the collection Interviews from the Edge, edited by Mark Yakich and John Biguenet.

Remember some very fine verses by Rudyard Kipling, the famous “Ballad of East and West.” There you have a British officer who is pursuing an Afghan horse thief. They’re riding. Then Kipling writes, “They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn.” Now, you can’t ride the moon out of…