IV
(
Discurso do Capibaribe
)
§Aquele rio
está na memória
como um cão vivo
dentro de uma sala.
Como um cão vivo
dentro de um bolso.
Como um cão vivo
debaixo dos lençóis,
debaixo da camisa,
da pele.
§Um cão, porque vive,
é agudo.
O que vive
não entorpece.
O que vive fere.
O homem,
porque vive,
choca com o que vive.
Viver
é ir entre o que vive.
§O que vive
incomoda de vida
o silêncio, o sono, o corpo
que sonhou cortar-se
roupas de nuvens.
O que vive choca,
tem dentes, arestas, é espesso.
O que vive é espesso
como um cão, um homem,
como aquele rio.
§Como todo o real
é espesso.
Aquele rio
é espesso e real.
Como uma maçã
é espessa.
Como um cachorro
é mais espesso do que uma maçã.
Como é mais espesso
o sangue do cachorro
do que o próprio cachorro.
Como é mais espesso
um homem
do que o sangue de um cachorro.
Como é muito mais espesso
o sangue de um homem
do que o sonho de um homem.
§Espesso
como uma maçã é espessa.
Como uma maçã
é muito mais espessa
se um homem a come
do que se um homem a vê.
Como é ainda mais espessa
se a fome a come.
Como é ainda muito mais espessa
se não a pode comer
a fome que a vê.
§Aquele rio
é espesso
como o real mais espesso.
Espesso
por sua paisagem espessa,
onde a fome
estende seus batalhões de secretas
e íntimas formigas.
§ E espesso
por sua fábula espessa;
pelo fluir
de suas geléias de terra;
ao parir
suas ilhas negras de terra.
§Porque é muito mais espessa
a vida que se desdobra
em mais vida,
como uma fruta
é mais espessa
que sua flor;
como a árvore
é mais espessa
que sua semente;
como a flor
é mais espessa
que sua árvore,
etc. etc.
§Espesso,
porque é mais espessa
a vida que se luta
cada dia,
o dia que se adquire
cada dia
(como uma ave
que vai cada segundo
conquistando seu vôo).
The Dog Without Feathers
1
(
Landscape of the Capibaribe River
)
§The city is crossed by the river
as a street
is crossed by a dog,
a fruit
by a sword.
§The river called to mind
a dog’s gentle tongue,
or a dog’s sad belly,
or that other river
which is the dirty wet cloth
of a dog’s two eyes.
§The river
was like a dog without feathers.
It knew nothing of the blue rain,
of the pink fountain,
of the water in a water glass,
of the water in pitchers,
of the fish in the water,
of the breeze on the water.
§It knew the crabs
of mud and rust.
It knew sludge
like a mucous membrane.
It must have known the octopus,
and surely knew
the feverish woman living in oysters.
§The river
never opens up to fish,
to the shimmer,
to the knifelike nervousness
existing in fish.
It never opens up in fish.
§It opens up in flowers,
poor and black
like black men and women.
It opens up into a flora
as squalid and beggarly
as the blacks who must beg.
It opens up in hard-leafed
mangroves, kinky
as a black man’s hair.
§Smooth like the belly
of a pregnant dog,
the river swells
without ever bursting.
The river’s childbirth
is like a dog’s,
fluid and invertebrate.
§And I never saw it seethe
(as bread when rising
seethes).
In silence
the river carries its fertile poverty,
pregnant with black earth.
§In silence it gives itself:
in capes of black earth,
in boots or gloves of black earth
for the foot or hand
that plunges in.
§As happens with dogs,
sometimes the river
seemed to stagnate.
Then its waters flowed
thicker and warmer;
they flowed with the thick
warm waves
of a snake.
§Then it had something
of a madman’s stagnation.
Something of the stagnation
of hospitals, prisons, asylums,
of the dirty and smothered life
(dirty, smothering laundry)
past which it slowly flowed.
§Something of the stagnation
of decayed palaces,
eaten
by mold and mistletoe.
Something of the stagnation
of obese trees
dripping a thousand sugars
from the Pernambuco dining rooms
past which it slowly flowed.
§(It is there,
with their backs to the river,
that the city’s “cultured families”
brood over the fat eggs
of their prose.
In the round peace of their kitchens
they viciously stir
their pots
of viscid indolence.)
§Could the river’s water
be the fruit of some tree?
Why did it seem
like ripened water?
Why the flies always
above it, as if about to land?
§Did any part of the river
ever jump for joy?
Was it ever, anywhere,
a song or fountain?
Why then
were its eyes painted blue
on maps?
II
(
Landscape of the Capibaribe
)
§Through the landscape
the river flowed
like a sword of thick liquid.
Like a humble
thickset dog.
§Through the landscape
(it flowed)
of men planted in mud;
of houses of mud
planted on islands
congealed in mud;
a landscape of mud
and mud amphibians.
§Like the river
those men
are like dogs without feathers.
(A dog without feathers
is more
than a dog that’s been stripped,
is more
than a dog that’s been killed.
§A dog without feathers
is when a tree without voice.
It is when like a bird
its roots in the air.
It is when something is so deeply
gnawed it is gnawed
to what it doesn’t have.)
§The river knew
about those men without feathers.
It knew
about their stark beards
and their painful hair
of shrimp and cotton shreds.
§It also knew
about the warehouses on the wharf
(where everything is
a huge door
without doors)
opened wide
to horizons reeking of gas.
§And it knew
about the lean, corklike city,
where bony men,
bridges and bony buildings
(everyone
dressed in duck cloth)
wither
to their intimate rubble.
§But it knew much better
the men without feathers
who wither
even beyond
their deepest rubble,
even beyond
their straw,
beyond
the straw in their hats,
beyond
even
the shirts they don’t have,
and far beyond their names,
even when written
on the driest sheet of paper.
§For it’s in the water of the river
that those men are lost
(slowly
and with no teeth).
There they are lost
(as a needle is not lost).
There they are lost
(as a clock does not break).
§There they are lost
as a mirror does not break.
There they are lost
as spilled water is lost:
without the sharp tooth
which in an instant snaps
the thread of man
in a man.
§In the water of the river
slowly
they are lost
in mud, a mud
which little by little
also cannot speak,
which little by little
acquires the cadaverous features
of mud;
the gummy blood,
the paralytic eye
of mud.
§In the river landscape
it is hard to know
where the river begins,
where the mud
begins from the river,
where the land
begins from the mud,
where man,
where his skin
begins from the mud,
where man begins
in that man.
§It is hard to know
whether that man
isn’t already
less than man
— less than the man
who can at least gnaw
at the bones of his work,
who can bleed
in the public square,
who can scream
if the millstone chews his arm,
who can have a life
that is chewed
and not just
dissolved
(in that smooth water
that softens his bones
as it softened the stones).