Poor Men’s Poetry

It’s 1982 and Jaws has just hit Argentina’s cinema screens, but in the town of San Pedro, beside the Paraná River, something sinister lurks in the waters closer to home. Caught in a timewarp of booze and regret, Federica wastes away the hours on the moonlit veranda as her withdrawn but talented daughter Olivia plays Schubert on her absent father’s piano. But when the wayward Lorenzo returns home unexpectedly after years incommunicado, the traumas of his last visit, and of a family broken by depression and fear, rise once again to the surface. Sensing danger, lodger Cristian plans to make good his exit, but something – or someone – in this troubled household proves dangerously irresistable.

He felt fenced in here… Suffocated. He was born different, but he realised late. And here, you either kill yourself or you leave. There aren’t many options here. I don’t blame him for trying to be happy somehow. I tried too. I try… Some people think that words… that words don’t have substance… Do you understand? That something so light, something that floats in the wind, can’t do any harm. But it can; it can. A whisper can change a whole life and it’s just words and silences; just a few words joined together can make you cry. Words have weight… Oh, I’m talking a lot… Oh, God… It’s the beer loosening my tongue. Don’t listen to me… Listen to me, but don’t pay me any mind… My words are worth very little, they weigh very little… They’re like poor men’s poetry.    

This translation was supported by Programa Sur, and is published in the Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Argentinian Plays.

Contact me for more details. 

Back to translation page.