Mario Benedetti spent fifteen summers in the Port of Pollença, where he wrote, among others, Primavera con una esquina rota.

                    MULATO

 

In the german bar run by an andalusian
in Puerto Pollensa (Mallorca/The Balearics)
there’s a little bird that sings like the gods
or at least how they say the gods sang

before the end of ideologies
they call it a mulatto
because it’s a cross between a canary and a goldfinch
or a goldfinch and a canary
who knows

the truth is that its trill
is blue red green yellow sky blue and white
its trill is a compendium of energies and colours
of bird pride and caged solitude
we exiles
were also turned into mulattoes
we are a cross between Stockholm and Buenos Aires
Montevideo and Madrid
Paris and Valparaiso
Pernambuco and Berlin
we don’t trill but if we did

it would be blue red green yellow sky blue and white
a compendium of energies and colours
of émigré pride and caged solitude
because obviously we are prisoners
of a dual mulattonostalgia

we move in a corridor, tunnel or narrow pass

where we yearn for what lies ahead
and then we yearn for what’s been left behind
and we would like to weep like the gods
or at least as the gods used to weep

before the end of ideologies

Inventario Dos, 1994

Translated by Rachel Waters.

(Paso de los Toros, Uruguay, 1920 – Montevideo, Uruguay, 2009). Mario Orlando Hamlet Hardy Brenno Benedetti Farugia, better known as Mario Benedetti, was a poet, essay writer, publisher, member of the 1945 Literary Generation, and one of the most outstanding exponents of literature written in the Spanish language in the last half of the 20th century. His career as a writer began in 1945, when his first book La víspera indelible (Indelible Eve) was published. His writing covers all genres, always accompanied by a carefully meditated critical review of the situations that he witnessed and experienced. He was part of the editorial team of the Uruguayan weekly newspaper Marcha, a publication that played an important political and cultural role, where he was in charge of editing its literary section in 1954.

His relationship with Mallorca took him first to Deià, where he visited the home of Claribel Alegría and Bud Flakoll. Then he rented a flat in Plaza Gomila in Palma, later moving to the city centre and living on the island for three years from 1980 to 1983. He bought an apartment in Mallorca “because it was one of the cheapest places in Spain”. After selling it, he spent his summers in Puerto de Pollença for 15 years, where he wrote Primavera con una esquina rota (Spring with a Broken Corner), among other things.  Hotel Sis Pins, in Puerto de Pollença, was Mario Benedetti and his wife Luz López Alegre’s place of exile.

Inventario Dos (Inventory 2) is the second anthology of verse by Benedetti, made up of poems published between 1986 and 1991. This poem, “Mulatto”, was published in 1991 in the book Las soledades de Babel (The Solitude of Babel).

Hotel Sis Pins, one of Puerto de Pollença’s most emblematic hotels, opened its doors in the 1950s when the Sierra de Gaieta family transformed a second home into a hotel. It was Mario Benedetti and his wife’s summer residence between 1980 and 1990. Thanks to the friendship that was forged between the writer and the hotel’s owners, they reserved the same room for him each summer.