Meeting Benches World art in all forms
Before dying, he dictated to his personal secretary, Ariel Silva what would become his last poem. In the Spanish-speaking world he was considered one of Latin America’s most important writers from the latter half of the 20th-century. At age four the boy was taken to Montevideo, where he received a superior education at a private school. Mario Benedetti was born to a prosperous family of Italian immigrants. His father was a viniculturist and a chemist. He began his literary career by publishing poetry, but he soon turned to the short story and the novel. His works became best sellers in Uruguay, and by the 1960s his reputation had spread throughout Latin America. From 1973 to 1985, when a civic-military dictatorship ruled Uruguay, Benedetti lived in exile. In the last ten years of his life he suffered from asthma and spent his winters in Madrid.
TE ESPERO
Te espero cuando la noche se haga día, suspiros de esperanzas ya perdidas. No creo que vengas, lo sé, sé que no vendrás. Sé que la distancia te hiere, sé que las noches son más frías, sé que ya no estás. Creo saber todo de ti. Sé que el día de pronto se te hace noche: sé que sueñas con mi amor, pero no lo dices, sé que soy un idiota al esperarte, pues sé que no vendrás. Te espero cuando miremos al cielo de noche: tú allá, yo aquí, añorando aquellos días en los que un beso marcó la despedida, quizás por el resto de nuestras vidas. Es triste hablar así. Cuando el día se me hace de noche, y la Luna oculta ese Sol tan radiante, me siento sólo, lo sé; nunca supe de nada tanto en mi vida, sólo sé que me encuentro muy solo, y que no estoy allí. Mis disculpas por sentir así, nunca mi intención ha sido ofenderte. Nunca soñé con quererte, ni con sentirme así. Mi aire se acaba como agua en el desierto, mi vida se acorta pues no te llevo dentro. Mi esperanza de vivir eres tú, y no estoy allí. ¿Por qué no estoy allí? Te preguntarás. ¿Por qué no he tomado ese bus que me llevaría a ti? Porque el mundo que llevo aquí no me permite estar allí, porque todas las noches me torturo pensando en ti. ¿Por qué no sólo me olvido de ti? ¿Por qué no vivo sólo así? ¿Por qué no sólo?
HOPING
I wait for you when the night becomes day, sighs of hopes already lost. I don’t believe that you will come, I know, I know that you will not come. I know that the distance wounds you, I know that the nights are colder, I know that you are not there anymore. I believe I know everything about you. I know that your day quickly becomes night: I know that you dream of my love, but you don’t say it, I know that I am an idiot for waiting for you, because I know you will not come. I wait for you when we watch the heavens at night: you over there, Me here, yearning for those days, when a kiss marked goodbye, perhaps for the rest of our lives. It is sad to speak like this. When my day becomes night, and the moon hides that radiant sun. I feel alone, I know, I never knew so much of nothing in my life, I only know that I find myself so alone, and I do not want to be there. A thousand pardons for feeling like that, my intention has never been to offend you. I never dram of loving you, nor of feeling like that. My air ends like water in the desert. My life is cut short because I don’t keep you within. My hope of living is you, and I am not there. Why am I not there? You will ask, why have I not taken that bus that will take me to you? Because the world that I have here will not allow me to be there. Because I torture myself every night thinking of you. Why do I not simply forget about you? Why do I not simply live like that? Why not simply.
