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| Buenos Aires 1966 - Photograph John Sullivan |
AMO el amor de los marineros
que besan y se van.
Dejan una promesa.
No vuelven nunca más.
I love the love of sailors
who kiss and leave
They leave a promise
Never do they return.
Pablo Neruda
The Argentine Navy (Armada República Argentina) has lost all hope of finding alive the 43 male and one female crew members of the 80s vintage diesel electric submarine ARA San Juan.
During the Malvinas War I saw on my TV an Argentine Skyhawk zooming across Goose Green suddenly explode into a puff of white. I was not sorry for the pilot. He was an officer who knew his life was on the line. But I felt terrible since that Skyhawk was one of my planes! I had translated the maintenance and operating manuals from English into Spanish in 1966 when the fighters had been purchased by the ARA from the US Navy.
With the loss of the submarine crew members I have revisited the events of that war but somehow this time I feel the loss of those very human sailors. Why?
It had to do with seeing some young Argentine sailors at a press conference by the ARA spokesman. Their uniforms were like mine. They were in their summer whites as it is summer in Argentina. In my portrait here I am wearing my winter blues. Those sailors looked as young as I was. It hit home in a way that reading of US sailors dying in a recent collision of their destroyer did not. For my marineros their future has been denied.
One of the few good laws that Argentine President Carlos Menem (1989-1999) passed was the ending of the military draft. I felt so sorry for those young, severely untrained conscripts who died in that useless Malvinas War killed by seasoned and well paid professional soldiers.
Of that war Jorge Luís Borges said, "Two bald men arguing who owned the comb."
This would mean that the young sailors on board the San Juan were there on their own volition. And yet I grieve. I cannot eliminate from my being that pride of being from a country that I no longer live in but is part of that essence that makes me whom I am.
F A R E W E L L - Pablo Neruda
un niño triste, como yo, nos mira.
Por esa vida que arderá en sus venas
tendrían que amarrarse nuestras vidas.
Por esas manos, hijas de tus manos,
tendrían que matar las manos mías.
Por sus ojos abiertos en la tierra
veré en los tuyos lágrimas un día.
Para que nada nos amarre
que no nos una nada.
Ni la palabra que aromó tu boca,
ni lo que no dijeron las palabras.
Ni la fiesta de amor que no tuvimos,
ni tus sollozos junto a la ventana.
AMO el amor de los marineros
que besan y se van.
Dejan una promesa.
No vuelven nunca más.
En cada puerto una mujer espera:
los marineros besan y se van.
Una noche se acuestan con la muerte
en el lecho del mar.
en besos, lecho y pan.
Amor que puede ser eterno
y puede ser fugaz.
Amor que quiere libertarse
para volver a amar.
Amor divinizado que se acerca
Amor divinizado que se va.)
ya no se endulzará junto a ti mi dolor.
Pero hacia donde vaya llevaré tu mirada
y hacia donde camines llevarás mi dolor.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía. Qué más? Juntos hicimos
un recodo en la ruta donde el amor pasó.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía. Tu serás del que te ame,
del que corte en tu huerto lo que he sembrado yo.
Yo me voy. Estoy triste: pero siempre estoy triste.
Vengo desde tus brazos. No sé hacia dónde voy.
...Desde tu corazón me dice adiós un niño.
Y yo le digo adiós.
Farewell - Pablo Neruda
From deep inside you, and kneeling down,
a sad boy, like me, is watching us.
For that life that will burn in his veins
our lives would have to be tied up.
For those hands, daughters of your hands,
my hands would have to kill.
For his opened eyes on the earth
one day I will see tears in your eyes.
I don't want him, Darling.
So that nothing ties us up,
so nothing unites us.
Neither the word that scented your mouth,
nor what your words didn't say.
Neither the party of love we didn't have,
nor your sobs by the window.
I love the love of the sailors,
who kiss and then leave.
They leave a promise.
They never come back.
In each harbor, a woman waits:
the sailors kiss and then leave.
(On one night they lie down with death
in the bed of the sea.)
I love the love that is divided
between kisses, beds and bread.
Love that can be eternal
and that can be fleeting.
Love that wants to free itself
so it can love again.
Divinized love that comes closer.
Divinized love that goes away.
No longer will my eyes be enchanted by your eyes,
no longer will my pain be sweetened by your side.
But wherever I go, I will carry your gaze
and wherever you walk, you will carry my pain.
I was yours, you were mine. What else? Together we made a bend on the route through which love passed.
I was yours, you were mine. You will belong to whoever loves you,
to whoever harvests what I have planted in your orchard.
I'm leaving. I'm sad: but I'm always sad.
I come from your arms. I don't know where I'm heading.
... From your heart, a boy says farewell to me.
And I say farewell to him.
