Tactics and Strategy
By Mario Benedetti

My tactic is to look at you
To learn how you are
Love you as you are

My tactic is to talk to you
And listen to you
And construct with words
An indestructible bridge

My tactic is to stay in your memory,
I don’t know how
Nor with what pretext
But stay within you

My tactic is to be honest
And know you are too
And that we don’t sell each other illusions
So that between us there is no curtain or abyss

My strategy instead is
Deeper and simpler.
My strategy is that some day
I don’t know how, nor with what pretext
That finally you need me.

— translated by Chris Kraul
Source: LA Times

Táctica y Estrategia

Mi táctica es
mirarte
aprender como sos
quererte como sos

mi táctica es
hablarte
y escucharte
construir con palabras
un puente indestructible

mi táctica es
quedarme en tu recuerdo
no sé cómo ni sé
con qué pretexto
pero quedarme en vos

mi táctica es
ser franco
y saber que sos franca
y que no nos vendamos
simulacros
para que entre los dos
no haya telón
ni abismos

mi estrategia es
en cambio
más profunda y más
simple

mi estrategia es
que un día cualquiera
no sé cómo ni sé
con qué pretexto
por fin me necesites.

Mario Benedetti (4 September 1920 – 17 May 2009) was an Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet as well as being an integral member of the Generación del 45 — a group of writers, mainly from Uruguay, who had a notable influence in the literary and cultural life of their country and region. Their name derives from the fact that their careers started out mainly between 1945 and 1950.

Benedetti wrote of the human condition – love, the passage of time, death, misery, injustice, loneliness and hope – but in a simple, direct language. Many of his poems became songs, put to music by the Uruguayan writer and musician Daniel Viglietti and the Catalan singer/songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat.

In spite of publishing more than 80 books and being published in twenty languages he is not well known in the English-speaking world, but in the Spanish-speaking world he is considered one of Latin America’s most important writers from the latter half of the 20th-century.

*Sources: wikipedia.org / independent.co.uk