How can one approach, at first, the voice of a poet?

I think that is a basic, simple and good question to start with. An answer, just as simple, is to listen to it, so that’s how I start:  A la Izquierda de un Roble    

My skin has never been defined as being a lover or very knowledgeable about poetry, I know about it, enough not to feel unaware of the central pieces that have accompanied humanity, but it never summoned me in a meaningful way. I am made of a wood that more deeply enjoys the narrative, the long reflection, these endless images that for those of us who come from the cold south, are so typical. That was my self-description, until I found Mario Benedetti, I am not sure, after so many years, if I found him or he found me. But what I can say with absolute clarity is that he has been a good traveling companion. With Benedetti I understood that poetry says much and more and that you can have a melodic voice, be a fervent political activist and describe human nature and its most nuclear feelings or describe a social process of change and do both with infinite depth. Both things are not divorced by default. That’s what Benedetti does.

Mario Benedetti always appears drawn between dreams and realities, memories are mixed with dialogues and dialogues, with scenes, literary or real, of his stamp in the Latin American reading process.

Memory flies and settles in Chile, late 1980s, I was far from these skyscrapers, surrounded by the river in the middle of Manhattan. At that time this location was not contemplated. Like Benedetti, life and memory are gradually assembled, step by step, with old oxen. Only in this way can progress be made daily.

The books that accompany life are good witnesses of the moments and spaces where one has to live. You take them with you, as if they were your children and even better, because with them there is not the rule of life that leaving implies, as part of life itself.  Benedetti has been with me for over 30 years and will continue to be, I review her lyrics, randomly, not always. But I know there it is.

The Truce was a good gift, enjoyed like a glass of good wine, slowly. It came to settle in and it did so in such a profound way that it has never left again. Many years ago, finishing my high school and entering the College for the first time, I came to my hands one of the most significant books by Mario Benedetti: La Tregua (The Truce, 1960).  I never imagined at that moment that that little book would open so many doors and so many windows.

For me, meeting Benedetti, first through his work and then personally, represents the beginning of an infinite reflection.

With the reading of La Tregua, I understood, with great force, the real capacity that exists to transmit a daily reality, transformed into hope, challenge and loss. Lifetime. That’s what Truce is, those little lights that change the perception of routine, but that are as ephemeral as a rainbow.

With the text you can feel an important part of the lives of men and women who in Latin America only aspire to be “a little happy” or to reaffirm with their mere existence that “the South also exists.” That is La Tregua, a declaration of resistance, identity, life and love. I firmly believe that it is a literary piece that brings together all the elements that can be aspired to analyze and consolidate in a learning process.

I was beginning a process of active cultural, social and political participation in the light of what the university world can offer and finding Benedetti, it was a necessary point to affirm myself in the decision of what to do and what to study. I knew all his narrative. My surprise was even more significant when I read Inventory, his first collection of poems, my reluctance to read poetry, was disappearing and some of his multiple verses, still accompany me, in the daily exercise of thinking and writing, in relating the present and the past. and draw the future.

This photograph makes all the sense with the poem: Hombre Preso que Mira a su Hijo

When Benedetti appeared near my face, I understood, even more the meaning of his words, to listen to that warm, delicate, empathic man, who was capable of creating reality from the simplest and turning it into something sublime, is within the points of greater significance in my narrative and literary experience. For a long time, being already in the middle of this giant island, I felt, re-reading their texts that calm returned to my soul and I walked again through the streets of the South.

Hagamos un Trato  

Compañera 
usted sabe 
puede contar 
conmigo 
no hasta dos 
o hasta diez 
sino contar 
conmigo 

si alguna vez 
advierte 
que la miro a los ojos 
y una veta de amor 
reconoce en los míos 
no alerte sus fusiles 
ni piense qué delirio 
a pesar de la veta 

o tal vez porque existe 
usted puede contar 
conmigo 

si otras veces 
me encuentra 
huraño sin motivo 
no piense qué flojera 
igual puede contar 
conmigo 

pero hagamos un trato 
yo quisiera contar 
con usted 

es tan lindo 
saber que usted existe 

uno se siente vivo 
y cuando digo esto 
quiero decir contar 
aunque sea hasta dos 
aunque sea hasta cinco 
no ya para que acuda 
presurosa en mi auxilio 
sino para saber 
a ciencia cierta 
que usted sabe que puede 
contar conmigo

            Montevideo is like a city without time, without haste, where time flows like good air. I have been there several times and my soul is always filled with the same feeling … people walk with their mate in hand, they walk and enjoy the street and the people. Benedetti was born and lived there until his death, the only time he was outside “the banks of the Rio de la Plata” was during the years of his exile.