Luis Benítez

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”The Argentinian poet, narrator and essayist Luis Benítez’s poems presented here show him to be an acutely political writer who captures the pulse of his time with unflinching candour. He writes about “assassins who are not so far away as they wait in the belly of the same horse that carries us on its hindquarters and the kidnapping of whole countries on the pretext of saving them among excessive violations.” His non-political verse, such as ‘Taxidermy’ is infused with dark humour, one that takes an oblique dig at the academia: “take a good poem and carefully take out its innards / as poisonous as the blowfish / fill it with academic hay / comb its hair as it is fashionable …” The eight poems presented here serve only as an appetizer. I would urge the readers to go beyond these offerings to savour the latitude of this urgent Latin American voice.”

—Sudeep Sen, Ars Notoria International & Poetry Editor

The poet, narrator and essayist Luis Benítez was born in Buenos Aires on November 10, 1956. He has received the title of Compagnon de la Poèsie from the Association La Porte des Poètes, based at the University of La Sorbonne, Paris, France. He is a member of the Association of Argentine Poets (APOA), the Society of Writers of the Argentine Republic (SEA) and the PEN Argentina Center. Among other national and international awards, he has received the International Poetry Prize La Porte des Poètes (Paris, 1991); the Second Prize of the Argentine Poetry Biennial (Buenos Aires, 1992); the Poetry Prize of the Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat Foundation (Buenos Aires, 1996); He has won the First Prize of the International Fiction Competition (Montevideo, 1996); the Primo Premio Tuscolorum di Poesia (Sicily, Italy, 1996); the First Prize for the Letras de Oro Novel (Buenos Aires, 2003); the 10th Accesit. Concours International de Poésie (Paris, 2003), the “Macedonio Palomino” International Prize for Published Works (Mexico, 2007) and the Third “Ricardo Rojas” Municipal Prize for the Novel (Buenos Aires, 2022). He is considered one of the most outstanding voices in contemporary Argentine poetry and a reference for current Latin American poetry. His 45 titles of poetry, essays and narrative have been published in Argentina, Chile, Spain, the United States, France, England, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Sweden, Venezuela and Uruguay. In 2023, the Argentine filmmaker Ileana Gómez Gavinoser filmed “Luis Benítez and the World of Poetry”, a biopic that won awards at film festivals in Spain, France, India, Italy, Macedonia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Turkey for best documentary feature film. In 2024, two essays have been published – the third and fourth of those published in Argentina – on his poetic work: Luis Benítez, a poetics of inquiry, by the critic and narrator Osvaldo Gallone, published by the Victoria Ocampo Foundation (Buenos Aires, 100 pages) and Luis Benítez. National History, by Prof. Juan Sebastián Rodríguez Maza, published by El Arte de Leer Ediciones (126 pages, Mendoza Capital, Argentine province of Mendoza). Latest published poetry collections: A great war inhabits things. The Best of Luis Benítez (poetic anthology, compiled and written by Gabriela Guerra Rey, Editorial Aquitania Siglo XXI, 230 pages, Mexico City, 2022) and The Entire Life. An Anthology (poetic anthology, Pro Latina Press, 156 pages, New York, USA, 2023).

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zyklon™ valley

there are children who are already

born without heads

because the war is coming

.

there are worried people who think

that something serious can happen

because the war is coming

.

a demented hippie girl howls up to

become hoarse

that there is a wooden horse filled

with elite troops

.

at the gates of europe and she is

silenced with a shot

because the war is coming

.

the war with hooked hands

and barbed-wire feet

with a fly head

and bat wings

the war that stares

and he’s as huge and long as a

mountain range

in the face of your lilliputian horror

.

we expect that at any moment

adolf hitler will leave his hideout

will take off his disguise and will tear off his rubber mask

to talk to us face-to-face on all international broadcasters

because the war is coming

.

there are young couples in a hurry to get married

buy the house and the car

have children soon and get divorced very soon

because the war is coming

the war that prays for peace

while he buys and sells shares

the war that believes himself to be holy

and the last resource behind good intentions

.

there are housewives who can’t get

marijuana anywhere

because the war is coming

.

at the reina sofia museum the guard was doubled

around the guernica

because the war is coming

.

in rome a project was presented

to cover the colosseum and the palatine mount

and the small round temple of hercules with soil

because the war is coming

.

there is a renovation of hope in skyscrapers

where everyone buzzes while

coming in through the windows

and rubbing their little legs with joy

because the war is coming

.

there is a resurgence of nazism, fascism and vampirism

because the war is coming

.

the honorable congress of the united states of america

meets in plenary and permanente session

and someone writes on his cell phone

”don’t wait for me for dinner tonight either yenny

don’t ask questions i can’t answer yenny

i love you and the kids yenny”

he makes a John Huston’s face and

feels relieved by sending his message

.

 “misfortunes always come in threes”

 “misfortunes always come in threes”

 “misfortunes always come in threes”

repeat those who work in vegetables gardens in asylums

and the nurses run for the pills

a decaffeinated mussolini awakens

in every woman and man on earth

because the war is coming

.

aesthetes’ circles are concerned and discuss

the threat of a revival of social poetry

because the war is coming

.

there are 20 millions refugees

forever expelled from our species

because the war is coming

.

a miraculous medicine is promoted

all over the world

in anticipation of future epidemics

because the war is coming

and then another and another and another

..

the writer pampered by the french right

predicts in his latest book

that there will be no war and sells in an afternoon

half a million copies

because the war is coming

.

there are forty-somethings and fifty-somethings

rereading lenin and Nostradamus with nostalgia

 because the war is coming

.

the noise of these computer keys

already sounds like the rattle of a machine gun

because the war is coming

.

at the vatican someone lights a cigarette

and smiles looking out the window

because the war is coming

.

grazing the sandals of god to the clouds went

the flour the coffee the tea and the heroin

because the war is coming

.

academics gather in urgent symposia

to discuss the possibility of the emergence

of post-war literature and which

theoretical framework would be appropriate

if one brick was left standing on another

because the war is coming

.

and this poem no longer continues anywhere

because the war is coming

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taxidermy

take a good poem and carefully take out its innards

as poisonous as the blow fish

fill it with academic hay

comb its hair as it is fashionable although

the hair insists on moving to the other side

place it on a pedestal and put at the base

a bronze plaque with its name imagined in modern latin

.

and the motionless beast will never disturb us

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you had different horizons country

although the ugly days and the years of fire

have baked you like a sponge cake you still seem to be

this matter made up of landscapes and families

where every so often somebody asks another what happened

what made you do those things to us

similar to crime or those things nobody dares to fully mention yet

like some shame hidden in photos burned at the right time

or blood relatives buried at the back of the house at dawn

when nobody is awake and those who might be

do not want to see and seek shelter in the worn-out history

of nightmares and insomnia

.

I was educated to love you country

as a child I cried singing the pledge of allegiance

I was the last possible generation the last bullet of your Russian roulette

the knock on the temple after which you wake up to another world map

where I uselessly searched for your silhouette of a bad girl

slapping you every time with more fury aimed at the world

.

you old hooker

I know you have been though a lot

(the last two hundred years have not been good at all

for neither of us)

and hope that tomorrow you would choose your gigolos better

for the best possible for your children

.

the boarding school where you left us smells of dog pee

and nobody is very friendly anywhere

plus you do not come to see me very often

I miss all these promises of love

when you gave birth to me in a municipal hospital

so typical giving birth among water leaks

.

and making innocents weep at the expense of others

smiling as if you were faultless

waiting for congratulations and flowers and sweets

among pillows and attentions where

whole and worn and in a new part

your old blood stood out

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Mass-man                         

He was by himself among things

like an only star in the sky

and a dead man in the centre of the earth.

Around him men traded

wire necklaces and life raised it babel

like a precise and silent spider.  For years and years

the seasons’ strings tied him to their knots

with the rope of death as silence

signed his mouth.  Because he fled amongst screams

horrible howling, of the hand beating

the hungry table in the centre of the soul.

And in all things and in all men

the sign of death glistening in the shadow.

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The iron poem

 Give me an iron poem crackling over the empty heads

and a steady hand in the torch notch,

a poem of blood and impatient bones

and the pen of flesh signing sentences

in the guilty minds of mad riders;

that turns cowards into salt, a rusty

stern iron poem kicking in the pond at midnight,

when not even the dead dream of dawn.

A hammer of words to leave the world with empty basins,

an enraged gesture a stone lit in the mouth of those sleeping

while water ascends in the Great Spheric Quarter;

a punch on the kneeling girl’s sex,

idiotic, patient humanity,

that doesn’t see, that doesn’t hear,

only talks to the ashes of its dead gods.

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haute couture

there is no worse profession

than that of fashion designers.

those who rule with conviction

if in this long season

the length of the verses

must be up to the knee

or up to the ankles.

their sour mannequins then parade

on all the available catwalks

like huge strawberries

—a big crimson salmon

staggering on shoes with very high heels—

or similar to ridiculous pans turned upside down

ready for the promised applause

of the repeated

boring novelty.

if the “how” must be half naked

if the “what” is to be seen.

its/their creators claim that

if homer and t. s. eliot had been invited

they would have said “it’s okay”

and almost no one would hesitate to accept it.

in all matters fashion dictates

are the worst thing in this world.

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