DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE, Carlos
The Word
I no longer want to consult
dictionaries in vain.
I only want the word
that will never be there
and that can't be invented.
One that would resume
and replace the world.
More sun than the sun,
in which we all could
live in communion,
mute,
savouring it.
tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra
na vida de minhas retinas tão fatigadas. Nunca me esquecerei que no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra tinha uma pedra no meio do caminho no meio do caminho tinha uma pedra.
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there was a stone in the middle of the road there was a stone in the middle of the road there was a stone.
in the life of my fatigued retinas. Never should I forget that in the middle of the road there was a stone there was a stone in the middle of the road in the middle of the road there was a stone.
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A chastity that opens her thighs
A chastity that opens her thighs
her brave flower shining
so narrow, the burning fire
disparate desire
dead to this still life
without words...
grave grass
these flames do pass
young souls still searching
without themselves...
resurrection alone
first naked now
clothes are lying
on this floor
their world disappear
from her black hole
without destiny...
Residue
A little of everything remained.
Of my fear. Of your disgust.
Of stuttered cries, Of the rose
a little remained.
….
Because a little of everything
remains: a little of your chin
in the chin of your daughter,
a little of your harsh silence
in the angry walls,
in the speechless,
climbing leaves.
…..
But a little of everything terribly remains.
Under the breaking waves,
under the clouds and winds,
under bridges and under tunnels,
under flames and under sarcasm,
under slobber and under vomit,
under the sob, the jail, the forgotten,
under gala shows and scarlet deaths,
under libraries, asylums, and triumphant churches,
under you yourself and your crusty feet,
under the hinges of class of family
a little of everything always remains.
Sometimes a button. Sometimes a rat.
…..
Amar / To Love
What can one creature do,
Among his fellow creatures, if not love?
Love and forget,
Love and mis-love,
Love, unlove, love?
Always, even to eyes gone glassy, love?
What else, I ask, can a loving being do,
Alone in a rotating universe, if not
To turn too, and love?
Love what the sea brings ashore,
Love what it buries and what, in the sea-breezes,
Is salt, or love’s yearning, or plain anguish?
To love solemnly the desert palms,
Love what is surrendered or pregnant with demands,
Love the barren, the unpolished,
A flowerless vase, an iron floor,
The inert breast, the street seen in a dream, a bird of prey.
This is our destiny: to love without accounting,
Distributing it to the faithless and the hollow,
An unlimited donation to complete ingratitude,
And, still from the emptied shell, the nervous, patient
Scrounging out of more and more love.
To love even our own lack of love, and in our parched state
To love the implicit water, the implied kiss, the infinite thirst.
(transl. by Harrison Tao)
For always / Para sempre
Why does God allow
that mothers go away?
A mother has no limit,
she is time without hour,
light that does not fade
when the wind blows
and the rain falls.
A velvet hidden
on wrinkled skin,
pure water, clean air,
pure thought.
Death happens
to what is brief and goes by
without leaving a trace.
a mother, in her grace,
is eternity.
Why must God remember
- profound mystery -
to take her away someday?
Were I the king of the world,
I would create a law:
a mother does never die,
she will always stay
with her child
and her child, though old,
will be little
like a maize grain
Friendly Song/Canção Amiga
I'm working on a song
in which my own mother sees her image,
everyone's mother sees her image,
and it speaks, it speaks just like two eyes.
I'm traveling along a roadway
that winds through many countries.
My old friends—if they don't see me,
I see them, I see and salute them.
I am giving away a secret
like someone who loves, or smiles.
In the most natural way
two caresses reach each other.
My whole life, all of our lives
make up a single diamond.
I've learned a few new phrases—
and to make others better.
I'm working on a song
that wakes men up
and lets children sleep.
Translation: Lloyd Schwartz
Morning Street
The splashing rain
unearthed my father.
I never imagined
him buried thus,
to the din of trolleys
on an asphalt street
giant palm trees slanting on the beach
(and a voice from sleep
to stroke my hair),
as melodies wash up
with lost money
discarded confessions
old papers, glasses, pearls.
To see him exposed
to the damp, acrid air,
that drifts in with the tide
and cuts your breath,
to wish to love him
without deceit
to cover him with kisses, with flowers, with swallows,
to alter time
to offer the warm
of a quiet embrace
from this elderly recluse,
discarded confessions
and a lamb-like truce.
To feel the lack
of inborn strengths
to want to carry him
to the older sofa
of a bygone ranch,
but splashes of rain
but sheets of mud beneath reddish street lamps
but all that exists
of morning and wind
between one nature and another
yawning sheds by the docks
discarded confessions
ingratitude.
What should a man do
at dawn
(a taste of defeat
in his mouth, in the air)
in whatever place?
Everything spoken, drunk, or even pretended
and the rest still buried
in the folds of sleep,
cigarette stubs
the wet glare of streets
discarded confessions
morning defeat.
Vague mountains
greening waves
newspapers already white,
hesitant melody
trying to spawn
conditions for hope
on this gray day, of a broken lament.
Nothing left to remind me
of the seamless asphalt.
Abandoned cellars
my body shivers
discarded confessions:
abruptly, the walk home.
Square Dance
João loved Teresa who loved Raimundo
who loved Maria who loved Joaquim who loved Lili
who didn’t love anyone.
João went to the United States, Teresa to a convent,
Raimundo died in an accident, Maria became a spinster,
Joaquim committed suicide, and Lili married J. Pinto Fernandes,
who had nothing to do with the story.
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It's all a smile, never tragic.
on the front of the body. Ass is enough to itself. Is there any other? Who knows, maybe the breasts. Mah! - Whispers ass - those brats still have things to learn.
in the round rocking. It goes alone with elegant cadence, in the miracle to be two in one, fully.
on his own. And it loves. In bed is stirred. Mountains rise up, go down. Waves beating on an endless beach.
in the caress of being and sway.
harmonious spheres over chaos.
out of size.
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José
What now, José?
The party’s over,
the lights are off,
the crowd’s gone,
the night’s gone cold,
what now, José?
what now, you?
you without a name,
who mocks the others,
you who write poetry
who love, protest?
what now, José?
You have no wife,
you have no speech
you have no affection,
you can’t drink,
you can’t smoke,
you can’t even spit,
the night’s gone cold,
the day didn’t come,
the tram didn’t come,
laughter didn’t come
utopia didn’t come
and everything ended
and everything fled
and everything rotted
what now, José?
what now, José?
Your sweet words,
your instance of fever,
your feasting and fasting,
your library,
your gold mine,
your glass suit,
your incoherence,
your hate—what now?
Key in hand
you want to open the door,
but no door exists;
you want to die in the sea,
but the sea has dried;
you want to go to Minas
but Minas is no longer there.
José, what now?
If you screamed,
if you moaned,
if you played
a Viennese waltz,
if you slept,
if you tired,
if you died…
But you don’t die,
you’re stubborn, José!
Alone in the dark
like a wild animal,
without tradition,
without a naked wall
to lean against,
without a black horse
that flees galloping,
you march, José!
José, where to?
The Girl Reveals a Thigh
The girl reveals a thigh,
the girl reveals an ass cheek,
only she doesn’t show me that thing
— conch shell, beryl, emerald —
which blossoms, with four petals,
and contains the most sumptuous
pleasure, that hyperboreal zone,
a mixture of honey and asphalt,
a door sealed at the hinges
with a giddiness held captive,
a sacrificial altar without
the blood of the rite, the girl
doesn’t show me that thing.
And she is torturing me, this virgin
with her modesty making me dizzy
from the sudden blow struck
by a vision of her luminous breasts,
her pink and black beauty
that winds itself into a ball,
wrinkled, intact, inaccessible,
that opens, then closes, then takes flight
and this female animal, by laughing,
dismisses what I might have asked her about,
about what should be given and even beyond
given, what should be eaten.
Oh, how the girl kills me,
turns my life into one in which
all hope is consumed
by shadow and sparkle.
Rubbing up against her leg. The fingers
discover the slow, curving,
animal-like secrets, yet
they are the greatest mystery,
always crude, nocturnal,
the three-pronged key to the urn,
this concealed craziness, it doesn’t
give me anything to go on at all.
Before it never would have provoked me.
Living didn’t have a purpose,
the feelings walked around lost,
time wasn’t set loose
nor did death come to subject me
to the light of the morningstar,
which at this hour is already the first star,
violent, rising up like nausea
in the wild beasts at the zoo.
How I might know her skin,
where it is concave and convex,
her pores, the golden skin
of her belly! But her sex
has been kept a secret of the state.
How I might know the cold, dewy
meadow of her flesh,
where a snake rouses from sleep
and traces its path
back and forth, among all the tremors!
But what perfume would there be
in an unseen cave? what enchantment
what tightness, what sweetness,
what pure, pristine line
calls me and leads me away?
It might offer me all its beauty
and I would kiss or bite
and draw blood: I would.
But her pubis refuses me.
In the burning night, in the day
her thighs come together.
Like a deserted inn
closed on the inside by a latch,
her thighs seal themselves,
seclude themselves, save themselves,
and who said that
I could make her my slave?
I could debate this possibility
without a glimmer of hope for victory,
already her body erases itself,
already its glory tarnishes,
already I am made different by that thing
which wounds me on the inside,
and now I don’t know for certain
if my thirst was more ferocious because of
that thing of hers that I might have possessed.
There are other fountains, other hungers,
other thighs of other animals: the world is
vast and the forgetting profound.
Maybe today the girl in the daylight . . .
Maybe. For certain it never will be.
And if it hides itself away
with such fugues and arabesques
and such stubborn secrecy,
on what day will it open?
What would need to change for it to offer
itself to me on an already cold night,
its pink and black blossom in the snow,
never visited by me,
that boat carrying incense that I can’t board?
Or is there no boat carrying incense at all . . .