The poet Blas de Otero was born in Bilbao, Vizcaya, in 1916 and died in 1979 in Madrid. He forms a part of the first post-�27 generation together with luminaries such as Jos� Garc�a Nieto (the other epoch-marking generation in modern Spanish letters is that of 1898). Blas Otero and his contemporaries were marked by the general unrest in Spanish society, culminating in the Civil War (1936-39), and are regarded by critics as �conservative�, in the sense that they were concerned with the affirmation of those fundamental human values they perceived as being threatened in uncertain times. This social conscience is evident in the piece Mundo, a lament over the absurdities of modern existence.
V. Stevenson August 2002
MUNDO
Blas de Otero
When Saint Augustine was writing his Soliloquies.
When the last German soldier was imploding in disgust and
impotence
When the Punic Wars were raging
and women lay beaten on a staircase landing back
then,
when Saint Augustine was writing The City of God with one hand
and with the other made notes to skewer heresies precisely
then,
when being a prisoner of war meant not being dead but
happily finding oneself alive
when perfidious impregnable women set to restoring
the crumbling constellations
and automatic lighters gave up the ghost with posthumous tenderness
then, as I told you,
while Saint Augustine was busy revising the proofs of
his Enchiridion ad Laurentium
German soldiers were urinating on new-bombed
Babies.
Sad, sad is the world like a girl who,
orphaned of her father, the thieves of embraces
press up against a wall
Many times have we striven to fill the solitude of men with
tears
Many, infinite times we have withheld our hand
and nothing more gained than pieces of grit
wedged tenaciously between our teeth
Oh if Saint Augustine had only known, that European diplomacy
was seeing cabaret artistes
of most dubious reputation on the side
and the US Army was sent packages in which
the least slip in spelling or punctuation
was lauded a happy omen of liberty for those peoples
oppressed by The Inner Light.
I want to weep over so many broken legs
and all that carping ennui
of poets under age eighteen.
Never was there known a disaster such as this
Even the Sisters of Charity speak of crisis
And bloated tomes are written on the decline of shaving
soap amongst the Eskimo
Tell me what end awaits us amidst this anguish
all this pain of parents who are strangers to each other
When Saint Augustine learns our automatic telephones have stopped
working
and fire insurance premiums have coyly been secreted
in the tresses of perky blondes
ah then, when Saint Augustine knows everything
A great bolt will strike the earth, and in the blink of an eye
we shall all be rendered fools.
From Poes�a espa�ola: 1935-2000, edici�n de Carmelo Guill�n Acosta. Madrid: Casals, 2000. pp. 103-5
Translation � V. Stevenson, 2001