José Emilio Pacheco has been called the greatest poet of the Mexican generation succeeding the generation of Octavio Paz and Alfonso Reyes. In 2009, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, a highly prestigious literary prize for Spanish-language authors. His novel Las batallas en el desierto is viewed in Mexico with the same regard as Americans have for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His poem, "The Defenseless", found in the collection City of Memory, depicts the moment between consciousness and sleep that accompanies anesthesia during an operation. The final line is as good a meditation on the nature of life and humanity that can be found in any poetry.
THE DEFENSELESS
You never could stand operations
in the movies or on TV. And now you, too
will be a lump of bleeding flesh.
Maybe one more dead man among the dead.
How the tyranny of anesthesia
has humbled you as it enters your being.
But first you comprehend,
in that lucid instant before the darkness,
why we commit Evil, why we seek
the omnipotence that breeds hatred.
We are the defenseless sinking into
the unbidden night.
in the movies or on TV. And now you, too
will be a lump of bleeding flesh.
Maybe one more dead man among the dead.
How the tyranny of anesthesia
has humbled you as it enters your being.
But first you comprehend,
in that lucid instant before the darkness,
why we commit Evil, why we seek
the omnipotence that breeds hatred.
We are the defenseless sinking into
the unbidden night.
Translated by Cynthia Steele and David Lauer
Tomorrow: Matthew Arnold.
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