“Novelist as well as a Vice-president of Nicaraguga in the 1980‘s, Sergio Ramirez points out that he admired Benedetti’s capacity for attracting young people to his readings as though he were some sort of rock star, and ‘they demanded poems of him the way they would demand songs of some other person. The way poetry could come on in a massive way, the way he did that made a big impression on me. It’s the aspiration of every writer, to exist in the souls of the young and that they love him or that he be able to console them. He succeeded in his goal: to do something for others.’”
A recital by Mario Benedetti of his poem about The Disappeared (those who simply vanished at the hands of the military governments of Uruguay and Argentina during the 1970s and '80s), accompanied by a long-time friend and collaborator of his, the singer Daniel Viglieti, can be found on YouTube.
Here is another of Benedetti’s poems, followed by my translation to English, about the bandoneón, the large concertina-like instrument that is often thought of as the soul of tango.
Bandoneón
Mario Benedetti
Me jode confesarlo
pero la vida es también un bandoneón
hay quien sostiene que lo toca dios
pero yo estoy seguro de que es Troilo
ya que dios apenas toca el arpa
y mal
fuere quien fuere lo cierto es
que nos estira en un solo ademán purísimo
y luego nos reduce de a poco a casi nada
y claro nos arranca confesiones
quejas que son clamores
vértebras de alegría
esperanzas que vuelven
como los hijos pródigos
y sobre todo como los estribillos
me jode confesarlo
porque lo cierto es que hoy en día
pocos
quieren ser tango
la natural tendencia
es a ser rumba o mambo o chachachá
o merengue o bolero o tal vez casino
en último caso valsecito o milonga
pasodoble jamás
pero cuando dios o Pichuco o quien sea
toma entre sus manos la vida bandoneón
y le sugiere que llore o regocije
uno siente el tremendo decoro de ser tango
y se deja cantar y ni se acuerda
que allá espera
el estuche.
Bandoneón
I’m fucked, confessing it,
but life too is a bandoneón
there are some who hold that God plays it
but I’m sure that it’s Troilo
since God can hardly play the harp,
and that badly
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