Adónde está la libertad/Where is freedom

Fragments of a film: Los delincuentes (2023), by Rodrigo Moreno of Argentina


As for what I think about freedom, I think it’s in the movie. The idea of living to work implies a modern form of slavery. This is what Morán says: when two people meet in the city, the first thing they ask each other is “and what do you do for work?” Work is placed almost above any bond. So it seems to me that what is lost there is the individual exercise of freedom, of having leisure time, so that your time is not formatted in a factory like in Modern Times, making nuts.

Interview with Rodrigo Moreno, director of Los delincuetes, by Andrés Brandariz (Caligari: Revista de Cine)


Adónde está la libertad

Adónde está la libertad
No dejo nunca de pensar
Quizás la tengan en algún lugar
Que tendremos que alcanzar

No creo que nunca
Sí, que nunca
No creo que nunca
La hemos pasado tan mal

No es posible
Es imposible
Aguantar

El otro día me quisieron matar
Con ametralladoras, pa-pa-pa-pa
Yo sólo quiero escapar
De toda su locura intelectual

No creo que nunca
Sí, que nunca
No creo que nunca
La hemos pasado tan mal

No es posible
Es imposible
Aguantar

Adónde está la libertad
No dejo nunca de pensar
Quizás la tengan en algún lugar
Que tendremos que alcanzar

No creo que nunca
Sí, que nunca
No creo que nunca
La hemos pasado tan mal

No es posible
Es imposible
Aguantar


Where is freedom

Where is freedom,
I never stop thinking,
Maybe they have it somewhere,
What will we have to achieve?

I don’t think ever,
If ever,
I don’t think ever,
We have had such a bad time;

It is not possible,
It is impossible,
To endure

The other day they wanted to kill me,
Machine gun pa-pa-pa-pa!,
I just want to escape,
Of all their intellectual madness

I don’t think ever,
If ever,
I don’t think ever,
We have had such a bad time;

It is not possible,
It is impossible,
To endure


La Libertad/Freedom

Nicolás Cabral, La Tempestad, (20/11/2023)

Dire news comes from Argentina, with a future president who spits freedom while announcing renewed forms of slavery as the univocal path to righting the economy. In parallel, an extraordinary film from that same country invites us to think about the word from other places. Los delincuentes (2023) understands the concept very differently than Milei. When a libertarian uses it, he refers to the freedom of capital. The filmmaker Rodrigo Moreno speaks of something very different, what Sartre understood as the constitutive power of every act. I also find reasons to read the film from a subtle but decidedly anarchist perspective. The delincuente is, here, as in its etymology, the one who abandons the norm. And the norm in an administered society is to sell labor power and life-time to an employer until obtaining a retirement when it is too late to think about anything else.

Morán’s (Daniel Elías) arithmetic is unappealable. Treasurer of a bank, he calculates the amount of his salary until retirement, multiplies it by two (there will be an accomplice) and withdraws exactly that amount from the vault. Without violence, taking advantage of the trust placed in him as an employee, he will hide the money and turn himself in to the police confessing to his crime. He knows that, with good behavior, he will be out of prison in three and a half years. The calculation is precisely that: not to wait five decades to obtain freedom in the form of a pension, but to spend just a fraction of that time locked up and then enjoy the rest of your days in the mountains of Córdoba, without working another day. Román (Esteban Bigliardi), a fellow banker, will be the one who keeps the booty, forced to become a partner, with the same letters in his name, which will also make up those of the sisters Norma (Margarita Molfino) and Morna (Cecilia Rainero), appearances on his “criminal” path in the town of Alpa Corral. Unfoldings,, duplications, confusions.

Like every great story (cinematic or literary), Los delincuentes makes its theme the form. Here the question about freedom, whose vehicle is a song from Pappo’s Blues’ first album, is in the very conception of the film, which is several films in its more than three hours of duration. What begins as a heist, a reworking of Apenas un delincuente (1949) by Hugo Fregonese, abandons the generic codes to indulge in other searches, in the successive discoveries that allowed a four-year filming with a pandemic in the middle. The first part of the film gives no indication of its historical moment, it seems like the seventies in the Buenos Aires Microcenter, with Piazzolla leading the way. A dynamic montage, which entwines short shots, defines the initial rhythm, in a city and an office that denote routine, repetition, managed life. In this first moment, the robbery takes place, followed by its immediate consequences, but the second chapter (of a total of four) will involve a sharp turn towards open and bright spaces, longer shots, when Román leaves to hide the money and he makes new friends next to a river, in the enjoyment of a time without direction or meaning.

We will still have, in Moreno’s film, a new reflection on freedom and even a mise en abyss (a Chilean videographer, Ramón, spends years filming the landscape of the mountains, searching for the exceptional in the midst of homogeneity). In which movie is a poem by Juan L. Ortiz read after intercourse? In Los delincuentes. How to spend the immobile days of prison without succumbing to suffocation? Obsessively reading “La Gran Salina” by Ricardo Zelarayán (“Since I was a child I tried to cut a drop of water / in two / (with scissors)”, which a literature teacher (Fabián Casas) has the inmates discover in a classroom. That is to continue being delinquent, constantly abandoning the norm, to read a poem aloud in the prison yard. There Morán finds the freedom that only later, perhaps, he will achieve in the mountains of Córdoba, when he can be entirely master of his time. The day he is released, the phrase “MUERTE LOS QUE GOBIERNAN”/“DEATH TO THOSE WHO GOVERN” can be read graffitied on the outside wall of the prison.

There is no usual politics in Los delincuentes; neither Morán nor anyone else shows signs of a specific ideology. There is, yes, a desire not to command or receive orders. Wealth is understood as abundance of time, not money (in a movie theater L’Argent, Robert Bresson’s last film, is being shown). In the anticipated resistance necessary to endure the criminal capitalism that Milei promises, a film teaches us which freedom matters: that of bodies, that of language, never that of capital. Rodrigo Moreno’s destituent poetics confirms that in the artistic imagination there remain reserves of psychic energy to face whatever comes.


Fui al rio

Juan L. Ortiz

Fui al río, y lo sentía
cerca de mí, enfrente de mí.
Las ramas tenían voces
que no llegaban hasta mí.
La corriente decía
cosas que no entendía.
Me angustiaba casi.
Quería comprenderlo,
sentir qué decía el cielo vago y pálido en él
con sus primeras sílabas alargadas,
pero no podía.

Regresaba
—¿Era yo el que regresaba?—
en la angustia vaga
de sentirme solo entre las cosas últimas y secretas.
De pronto sentí el río en mí,
corría en mí
con sus orillas trémulas de señas,
con sus hondos reflejos apenas estrellados.
Corría el río en mí con sus ramajes.
Era yo un río en el anochecer,
y suspiraban en mí los árboles,
y el sendero y las hierbas se apagaban en mí.
Me atravesaba un río, me atravesaba un río!


I went to the river, and I felt it
near me, in front of me.
The branches had voices
that didn’t reach me.
The current said
things I didn’t understand.
It almost distressed me.
I wanted to understand it,
to feel what the vague and pale sky said in it
with its first elongated syllables,
but I couldn’t.

I was coming back
—Was I the one returning?—
in vague anguish
of feeling alone among the ultimate and secret things.
Suddenly I felt the river in me,
running in me
with its trembling shores of signs,
with its deep barely starry reflections.
The river flowed in me with its branches.
I was a river in the evening,
and the trees sighed in me,
and the path and the grasses faded away in me.
A river was passing through me, a river was passing through me!


La Gran Salina

Ricardo Zelarayán

La locomotora ilumina la sal inmensa,
los bloques de sal de los costados,
yuyos mezclados con sal que crecen
          entre las vías.
Yo vacilo . . . .
y callo . . . .
porque estoy pensando en los trenes de carga
que pasan de noche por la Gran Salina.
La palabra misterio hay que aplastarla
como se aplasta una pulga,
entre los dos pulgares.
La palabra misterio ya no explica nada.
(El misterio es nada y la nada no se explica
        por sí misma.)
Habría que reemplazar la palabra misterio
(al menos por hoy, al menos por este
       “poema”)
por lo que yo siento cuando pienso en los
       trenes de carga
que pasan de noche por la Gran Salina.
La pera trepida en el plato.
La miel se despereza en el frasco cerrado,
para desesperación de las moscas que la acechan posadas en el vidrio.
Pero yo no me explico
y hasta ahora nadie ha podido explicarme
por qué me sorprendo pensando
en la Gran Salina.
El hombre de chaleco del salón comedor
se ha quitado los anteojos.
Los anteojos trepidan sobre el mantel de la
        mesa tendida.
Todo trepida,
todo se estremece,
en el tren que pasa a mediodía por
        la Gran Salina.
Yo me he sorprendido mirando
la sombra del avión que pasa por
        la Gran Salina.
Pero eso no explica nada.
Es como una gota que se evapora enseguida.
Hay que distraerse, dicen.
Hay que distraerse mirando y recordando
para tapar el sueño
de la Gran Salina.
Un piano colgado como una araña del hilo
se ha detenido entre los pisos doce y trece . . .
Un camión pasa cargado
        de ventiladores de pie
que mueven alegremente sus hélices.
En 1948, en Salta,
fuimos de noche a cazar vizcachas y ranas,
y la conversación se apagó con el fuego del
        asado,
abrumados como estábamos por el cielo negro
        y estrellado.
Nerviosamente encendíamos y apagábamos
        las linternas
hasta quedarnos sin pilas.
Tampoco puedo explicarme por qué sueño
       con pilas de linternas,
con pilas para radios a transistores.
Ni por qué sueño con lamparitas de luz,
delicadamente guardadas en sus cajas
       respectivas.
Ni por qué me sorprendo mirando el
       filamento roto
de una lamparita quemada.
Nunca he visto . . .
nunca he podido imaginarme
la lluvia cayendo sobre la Gran Salina.
Yo no tengo objetivos pero me gusta
       objetivar.
Desde chico intenté cortar una gota de agua
       en dos
(con una tijera).
Aún hoy intento,
apartando las cosas de la mesa
o ahuyentando amigos,
imitar, imaginarme, la lluvia sobre la
      Gran Salina.
Tomo una plancha caliente y le salpico gotas
      de agua.
Pero aunque pueda imaginarme todo,
nunca podré imaginarme
el olor a salina mojada.
Anoche llegué a mi casa a las tres de la
      mañana.
En la oscuridad, tropecé con un mueble . . .
y allí nomás me quedé pensando
en lo que no quería pensar . . .
en lo que creía bien olvidado!
Pero en realidad me estaba escapando
del sueño estremecedor de la Gran Salina.
Y ahora me interrogo a mí mismo
como si estuviera preso y declarara:
La Gran Salina o Salina Grande
está situada al norte de Córdoba,
cerca (o dentro, no recuerdo)
del límite con Santiago del Estero.
Estoy mirando el mapa . . .
pero esto no explica nada.
La caja de fósforos queda vacía
a las cuatro de la mañana
y yo me palpo a mí mismo, desesperado,
con el cigarrillo en la boca . . .
Habría que inventar el fuego, pensarían
      algunos.
Yo en cambio pienso en los reflejos del tren
que pasa de noche junto al río Salado.
No puedo dormir cuando viajando de noche
sé que tengo a mi derecha
el río Salado.
Paro aún así sigo escapando del gran
      misterio . . .
del misterio de la sal inagotable de la
      Gran Salina.
Recuerdo cuando arrojábamos impunemente
      naranjas chupadas
al espejo ciego y enceguecedor de la
     Gran Salina.
(A la siesta, cuando la resolana enceguece
     más que el sol).
Esperábamos llegar a Tucumán a las siete
y a las dos de la tarde tuvimos que cambiar
      una rueda
junto a la Gran Salina.
Un diario volaba por el aire . . .
el sol calcinaba las arrugadas noticias del
      mundo
del diario que caía sobre la Gran Salina.
Y vi pasar varios trenes
y hasta un jet . . .
Los pasajeros de los Caravelle
o de los Bac One-Eleven,
no saben que esa mancha azulada,
que a lo mejor están viendo en este mismo
       momento,
desde ocho mil metros de altura,
esa mancha azulada que permanece durante
       escasos minutos,
es la Gran Salina,
la Salina Grande.
Pero el jet anda muy alto.
La Gran Salina no conoce su sombra que
      pasa.
Los pasajeros del jet duermen . . .
se sienten muy seguros.
En el jet no hay paracaídas.
Los jets no caen. Explotan.
Hace unos años,
un avión que no era un jet volaba, creo,
      sobre Santa Fe.
De pronto se abrió una puerta
y una camarera tuvo que obedecer calladita
a las sagradas leyes de la física,
y demostrar su inequívoco apego a la ley
      de la gravedad.
Una ley dura como las piedras metidas en la
      boca de Demóstenes
que, según dicen, hablaba mucho.
Aquí hay que hacer un minuto de silencio.
Primero, por la dócil camarera sin cama del
      avión.
Después, por las palabras muertas,
muertas por no decir nada . . .
misterio, por ejemplo,
que sirve para no explicar lo inexplicable,
lo que yo siento cuando pienso en
      la Gran Salina,
lo que traté de no pensar un día
      que caminaba por la Gran Salina
tratando de distraerme y de no pensar dónde
      estaba,
escuchando una canción de Leo Dan
que pasaba LV12 Radio Aconquija
y el Concierto en sol de Ravel por la filial de
     Radio Nacional.
¿Qué pensaría Ravel, el finado,
si caminara como yo en ese momento
por la Gran Salina . . . ?
Ravel, púdico sentimental,
te imagino tocando el piano que hoy vi
      colgado
entre el piso 12 y el piso 13.
Sí, pobre Ravel de 1932
con un tumor en la cabeza que ya
      no lo dejaba componer.
Ravel tocando solo,
de noche (pero eso sí, absolutamente solo)
los “Valses nobles y sentimentales” en medio de
      la Gran Salina.
Estoy seguro que se hubiera interrumpido
al escuchar el silbato lejano de la locomotora,
para ver el haz de luz a la distancia
y la penumbra sobre la Gran Salina.
Días pasados fui al Hospital.
Hace años yo andaba por allí,
despreocupado y con mi guardapolvo blanco.
Pero ahora, de simple paciente,
sentí el ruidito angustioso
¡Trank!
de la máquina de sacar radiografías.
¡Y que pase otro! gritó el enfermero.
Pero el otro no podrá explicarme
por qué tengo sed,
por qué voy detrás del agua cautiva de la
      botella
y de la sal capturada en el salero,
yo, tan luego yo,
capturado en el sueño de la Gran Salina.
Un amigo, alto funcionario estatal,
me ofreció su pase libre para viajar por todo el
      país.
Total, me dijo, es un pase innominado,
cualquiera lo puede usar . . .
si se lo presto.
El pase sin nombre me deslumbró
como la marca de la cubierta que leí y releí
cuando cambiábamos la rueda junto a la
     Gran Salina.
Pero después pensé en Tucumán
(mi segunda provincia)
y en las vértebras azules del Aconquija
horadando las nubes blancas.
Ahora me entero que mi amigo,
el del pase sin nombre,
se separó de la mujer.
Aquí me callo . . .
Pero el silencio me hace pensar ahora
en lo que no quise pensar cuando miré el pase
     sin nombre que me ofrecían,
en lo que dejé de pensar hace un momento . . .
cuando vi pasar el ascensor con una mujer
     silenciosa
que no me quiso llevar.
Olvidemos el ascensor perdido
y pensemos de nuevo, de frente, en la sal
(cloruro de sodio)
y en el misterio . . .
Pero como nada es misterio
hagamos una traducción de apuro:
miss Terio
o miss Tedio
o chica rodeada de teros asustados
o algo por el estilo.
Pero no hay distracción que valga.
El ayudante de cocina del vagón comedor
se rasca la cabeza de tanto en tanto
pero sigue pelando papas sin distraerse
en el tren que se acerca a la Gran Salina.
Y el ascensor perdido con la mujer silenciosa
sigue recorriendo kilómetros entre la
     planta baja
y el piso quince.
El sastre de enfrente que ya comió
se asoma a tomar aire con el metro colgado
     en el cuello.
Yo pienso en comer, como se ve . . .
Son exactamente las 14 horas, 8 minutos,
     30 segundos.
Y también, no sé por qué,
pienso en el acorazado de bolsillo Graf Spee
que en los comienzos de la última guerra
se suicidó antes que su capitán
frente a Punta del Este.
El Graf Spee yace a treinta metros
    de profundidad.
Ya nadie se acuerda de él.
Ni siquiera los hombres-rana
que bajaron a explorar sus entrañas.
Pero hasta los hombre-rana
salen a comer a mediodía.
Y a veces, para comer,
sólo se quitan las antiparras y los
     tubos de oxígeno.
Todavía hay gente que se asombra viendo
     comer a esos hombres . . .
con patas de rana.
¡Los hombres-rana reclaman al mozo la sal que
      se olvidó!
Dale! . . .  Dale!
Hoy almuerzo con amigos
(si es que no se fueron).
Miraré de costado la sal y pediré pimienta
     en vez,
porque tengo miedo de quedarme callado,
ya se sabe por qué.
No quiero quedarme callado
ni distraerme,
ya se sabe por qué.
En realidad no se sabe nada
del sueño de la pilas,
de la lluvia sobre la sal,
de la chica del ascensor,
del sastre asomado con el metro colgado
o del tren que pasa de noche indiferente
junto a lo que ya se sabe
y no se sabe

*

Hace años creía
que “después del almuerzo es otra cosa” . . .
es decir que las cosas son otras
después del almuerzo.
Este poema (llamémoslo así),
partido en dos por el almuerzo
y reanudado después, me contradice.
No comí postre.
¡Siento la boca salada!
Pero no voy a insistir.
El domingo pasado,
en casa de un amigo poeta,
conocí a un chileno novelista e izquierdista
que se fue a Pekín y que, posiblemente,
no vuelva a ver en mi vida.
Tímidamente, entre cinco porteños y un
     chileno izquierdista
metí una frase de Lautréamont
que como buen franchute es uruguayo
y si es uruguayo es entrerriano.
Una frase (salada) para terminar
      (o interrumpir) este poema:
“Toda el agua del mar no bastaría para lavar
      una mancha de sangre intelectual”.


The Great Salt Flats

Ricardo Zelarayán

The locomotive lights up the immense salt,
the blocks of salt on the sides,
the weeds mixed with salt that grow amongst
       the railroad tracks.
I hesitate . . .
and keep quiet . . .
because I am thinking of the cargo trains
that run at night through the Great Salt Flats.
The word mystery needs to be squashed
like a flea is squashed,
between two thumbs.
The word mystery doesn’t explain anything now.
(Mystery is nothing and nothing cannot be explained
       on its own)
We should replace the word mystery
(at least for today, at least for this
      “poem”)
for what I feel when I think of the
      cargo trains
that run at night through the Great Salt Flats.
A pear trembles on a plate.
Honey awakens inside a closed jar 
to the desperation of flies lying in wait, perched on the glass.
But I cannot explain 
and up till now nobody has been able to explain to me
why it surprises me to think
of the Great Salt Flats.
The waistcoated man in the dining car
has taken his glasses off.
The glasses tremble on the cloth of the
       laid table.
Everything trembles,
everything shakes,
on the train that runs at noon through
       the Great Salt Flats.
I’ve surprised myself looking
at the shadow of a plane that flies over
       the Great Salt Flats.  
But that explains nothing.
It is like a drop of water that quickly evaporates.
We have to keep busy, they say.
We have to keep busy by looking and remembering
to bury the dream
about the Great Salt Flats.
A piano hanging like a spider from its web
has stopped between the twelfth and thirteenth floors . . .
A truck passes by carrying standing
       fans    
joyfully moving their helixes.
In 1948, in Salta,
we went to hunt viscachas and frogs at night,
and the conversation died down with the fire of the
       barbecue,
overcome as we were by the sky, black
       and starry.
Nervously, on and off we switched
       the torches
until we ran out of batteries.
Nor can I explain to myself why I dream
       of torch batteries,
of batteries for transistor radios.
Neither why I dream of lightbulbs,
delicately stored in their respective
       boxes.
Or why I am amazed while looking at the
       broken filament
of a burnt lightbulb.
I’ve never seen . . .
I’ve never been able to imagine
the rain falling over the Great Salt Flats.
I don’t have objectives but I like
       to objectify.
Since childhood I’ve been trying to cut a drop of water
       in two
(with a pair of scissors).
Still today I try
clearing the table
or chasing away friends,
imitating, imagining rain falling over The
       Great Salt Flats.
I take a hot iron and I splash onto it drops
       of water.      
But even if I could imagine everything,
I’ll never be able to imagine 
the smell of wet salt flats.
Last night I came home at three in the
       morning.
In the darkness, I tripped over an item of furniture . . .
and right there I started to think  
about what I didn’t want to think about . . .
what I thought I had well forgotten!
But in reality I was escaping
from the harrowing dream of the Great Salt Flats.
And now I interrogate myself
as if I were being interrogated in prison:
“the Great Salt Flats or Salina Grande
is situated to the north of Córdoba,
near (or within, I can’t remember)
the border with Santiago del Estero.”
I’m looking at a map . . .
but this explains nothing.
The box of matches is now empty
at four in the morning
and I, desperate, pat my pockets
with a cigarette in my mouth . . .
We ought to invent fire, some
    would think.
I instead think of the reflected train
that runs at night along the Salado River.
I cannot sleep while travelling at night
knowing that on my right I have
the Salado river.
Yet even then I keep fleeing from the great
       mystery . . .
from the mystery of the inexhaustible salt of the
       Great Salt Flats.
I remember when we carelessly threw away
       sucked oranges
into the blind and blinding mirror of the
       Great Salt Flats.
(At siesta time, when the sun’s glare blinds
       more than the sun itself.)
We were hoping to arrive in Tucumán at seven
but at two in the afternoon we had to change
       a tyre
along the Great Salt Flats.
A newspaper was flying through the air . . .
the sun was calcinating the crumpled news of
       the world
from the newspaper falling on the Great Salt Flats.
And I saw a few trains pass
and even a jet . . .
The passengers of the Caravelle
or the Bac One-Eleven,
they don’t know that that bluish stain,
which perhaps they are watching at this precise
       moment,
from eight thousand metres of altitude,
that bluish stain that remains for
       only a moment,
is the Great Salt Flats,
the Salina Grande.
But the jet flies very high.
the Great Salt Flats don’t notice the shadow that
       passes.
The passengers of the jet are asleep . . .
they feel very safe.
Inside the jet there are no parachutes.
Jets don’t fall. They explode.
A few years ago,
a plane, that wasn’t a jet, was flying, I think,
       over Santa Fe.
Suddenly a door opened
and an air hostess had to silently obey
the sacred laws of physics,
and prove her unequivocal attachment to the laws
       of gravity.
A law hard like the stones inside the
       mouth of Demosthenes,
who, some say, talked a lot.
Here we need to observe a minute’s silence.
Firstly, for the docile air hostess without hostel on the
       plane.
Then, for the dead words,
dead for not saying much . . .
mystery, for example,
that doesn’t serve to explain the unexplainable,
what I feel when I think of
       the Great Salt Flats,
what I tried not to think the day
       I walked through the Great Salt Flats
trying to keep busy and to ignore where
       I was,
listening to a song by Leo Dan
that was being broadcast by LV12 Radio Aconquija
and the Piano Concerto in G Major by Ravel, aired by an affiliate 
      of National Radio.
What would Ravel, deceased, think,
if he were walking as I did
through the Great Salt Flats.
Ravel, modestly sentimental,
I imagine you playing the piano that I saw today,
       hanging
between the twelfth and thirteenth floors.    
Yes, poor Ravel of 1932,
with a tumour in his head, which by then
       wasn’t allowing him to compose.
Ravel playing alone,
at night (but mind you, absolutely alone)
the Valses nobles et sentimentales in the midst of
       the Great Salt Flats.
I am sure he would have paused
as he’d heard the far-away whistle of the locomotive
to see the beam of light at a distance
and the twilight over the Great Salt Flats.
A few days ago I went to Hospital.
I used to be there years ago,
carefree and in my white coat.
But now, as a simple patient,
I heard the distressing little noise  
Trank!
of the radiography machine.
Who’s next? the nurse shouted.
But the next won’t be able to explain to me
why I am thirsty,
why I go after the water captive in the
       bottle
and the salt captive in the salt cellar,
I, even I,
captured in the dream of the Great Salt Flats.
A friend, a high state official,
offered me his free pass to travel around the whole
       country.        
In any case, he said, it’s an unnamed pass,
anyone can use it . . .
if I lend it to them.
The unnamed pass dazzled me
like the logo on the wheel cover I read and reread
while we were changing the tyre along the
       Great Salt Flats.
But then I thought of Tucumán
(my home away from home)
and of the blue vertebrae of the Aconquija
perforating the white clouds.
Now I discover that my friend,
the one with the unnamed pass,
has separated from his wife. 
I keep quiet . . .
But the silence now makes me think
of what I didn’t want to think when I saw the pass
       without a name that was offered me,
of what I stopped thinking a moment ago . . .
when I saw the lift pass by with a woman
       in silence
that didn’t want to let me in.
Let’s forget the missed lift,
and think again, head-on, of the salt
(sodium chloride)
and of the mystery . . .
But as there is no mystery
Let’s make a hasty translation:
miss Tery
or miss Tedious
or girl surrounded by terrified lapwings
or something like that.
But no distraction suffices.
The kitchen hand from the dining car
scratches his head from time to time
but continues peeling potatoes undistracted
on the train that approaches the Great Salt Flats.
And the missed lift with the silent woman
keeps on running for kilometres between the
      ground floor
and the fifteenth.
The tailor opposite who has finished eating
leans out for fresh air with the measuring tape hanging  
       from his neck.
I think of eating, as you can see . . .
It’s exactly two o’clock, eight minutes,
       thirty seconds.
And also, I don’t know why,
I think of the pocket battleship Graf Spee  
that at the beginning of the last war
committed suicide before his captain did,
opposite Punta del Este.
The Graf Spee lies thirty metres
       deep.
Nobody remembers it now.
Not even the frogmen
who descended to explore its entrails.
But even the frogmen
come up to lunch at noon.
And sometimes, to eat,
they only remove their goggles and their
        oxygen tubes.
Still there are people who get surprised by seeing
       those men eating . . .
in swim fins.     
The frogmen complain to the waiter about the salt
       he forgot!
Come on! Come on!
Today I lunch with friends
(if they haven’t left).
I will ignore the salt and will ask for pepper
       instead,
because I’m afraid of keeping quiet.
We know why.
I don’t want to keep quiet,
nor to keep busy.  
We know why.
In reality nothing is known
of the dream with the batteries,
of the rain over the salt,
of the girl in the lift,
of the tailor leaning out with the measuring tape hanging
or of the train that passes at night, indifferently
between what is already known
and unknown.

*

Years ago I believed
that “after lunch is a different thing” . . .
in other words, that things are different
after lunch.
This poem (let’s so call it),
split in two by lunch
and resumed later, contradicts me.
I didn’t eat dessert.
My mouth feels salty!
But I won’t insist.
Last Sunday,
in the house of a poet friend
I met a Chilean novelist, a leftist,
who went to Beijing and who, possibly,
I might never see again in my lifetime.
Timidly, between five from Buenos Aires and one
       Chilean leftist,
I managed to get a phrase in by Lautréamont,
who as a good Frog is Uruguayan
and if he is Uruguayan he is from Entre Ríos.
A (salty) line to finish
       (or to interrupt) this poem:
“All the water in the sea would not suffice to wash out
        one stain of intellectual blood.”

(Translated from the Spanish by Leo Boix. Source: Asymptote)


I don’t know where freedom is today. I think it’s good to turn off your cell phone, leave social networks, maybe that’s freedom, maybe we have to disobey the mandate of our time. Maybe freedom always implies disobeying the mandate of our time in pursuit of the conquest of this: a time that is not productive, a time that is not to get a job, to pick up a girl or a boy. Maybe freedom is giving up a little of that, beyond deeper questions. It has to do a little with what the film does talk about, which is freeing yourself from the yoke. How to do it in such a decadent system like the one in which we live?

Rodrigo Moreno, quoted in “Los delincuentes” y un ensayo sobre la libertad, by Lila Bendersky (eldiarioAR, 11/11/2023)

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