Uruguayan Writer Mario Benedetti Dies At 88

This is a poem in memory of Mario Benedetti.

Talking With The Poet, Mario Benedetti,

                   After His Death

As we sit at this particular table

At your favorite cafe, where the kind waiter,

Miguel Braga serves us coffee or wine,

Depending on how we view love and kindness on this day...

You know, comrade, we have made a deal

Beyond Montevideo, beyond the grave where we all go.

Let us always talk or banter about the tango, mate,

Salsa, and the beautiful girls we saw in Paris,

Or the women who threw themselves at us in a drunken rage.

Was it poetry that attracted them to us,

Or was it simply we took them seriously beyond their lovely eyes,

Ample breasts and pouting lips?

So, now you have joined your wife, Luz, not in the clouds,

But in the beautiful earth of Uruguay...

Now, Don Mario, my dear Italian and Uruguayan friend,

It has come to be that the gentlest of nights is approaching...

Your death has not caused me grief for you will never die,

As long as there is poetry in the hearts of the young.

                                                  Luis Lazaro Tijerina

                                                     May 19th, 2009

                                                   Burlington, Vermont