Andrés Meoli – Ayer

Andrés Meoli – Corporate Business Development Director. IE Business School

Reading:

Ayer  by Mario Benedetti, (1920-2009).

I’d like to recite a poem by Mario Benedetti, the Uruguayan writer who died in 2009 and who was a member of the so-called Generation of ’45. I am very fond of this poem, which talks of the past, yesterday, and what’s still left of it. The poem is called Yesterday:

Yesterday the past passed leisurely by
with its definitive indecisiveness
knowing you to be unhappy and adrift
with all your misgivings stamped on your forehead

yesterday the past passed alongside the bridge
and carried away your captive liberty
exchanging its reticence in the flesh
for the small alarms of your innocence

yesterday the past passed by with its history
and its frayed uncertainty/
with its hallmark of terror and reproach

on it went making pain a habit
sowing failure in the memory of you
and abandoning you alone to the night.

—

Ayer pasó el pasado lentamente
con su vacilación definitiva
sabiéndote infeliz y a la deriva
con tus dudas selladas en la frente

ayer pasó el pasado por el puente
y se llevó tu libertad cautiva
cambiando su silencio en carne viva
por tus leves alarmas de inocente

ayer pasó el pasado con su historia
y su deshilachada incertidumbre/
con su huella de espanto y de reproche

fue haciendo del dolor una costumbre
sembrando de fracasos tu memoria
y dejándote a solas con la noche.