Mas existe o homem?
MEDITATIONS ON THE WORD MAN
But what is man,
what’s in the name?
A geography?
A metaphysical being?
A fable with no key
to unravel it?
How is man able
to feel himself
in a world so fleeting?
How can man
walk with other men
and not lose his name?
Does the salt he consumes
add nothing to him
and take nothing away
from what his father gave,
including his name?
How is a man made?
Just by lying down,
making love, and waiting
for the flower of man
to sprout from the belly?
How can one make
his own self
before making man?
By making his father
and father’s father and other
fathers and a father
from before the first man?
How much is man worth?
Less or more than his weight?
More today than yesterday?
Less when he’s old?
Less when he’s dead?
One less than another,
since the worth of man
is a human measure?
How does man die?
How does he begin to?
Is his death a self-
consuming hunger?
Does he die with each step?
Does he die when he sleeps?
Does he die when he dies?
Does the death of man
resemble the gum
he chews, the punch
he sips, the sleep
he plays at, unsure
if he’s near or far?
Dying, does man dream?
Why does man die?
Does he seek a form
of existing without life?
Does he divine a different,
unrepeating life
in some crazy horizon?
Does he seek another man?
Why, if death and man
walk hand in hand,
are the hours of man
so comical?
But what is man?
Does he, fearing death,
kill himself without fear?
Or is fear what kills him
with a silver dagger,
the slipknot of his tie,
a leap off the bridge?
Why does man live?
What forces him, an innocent
prisoner, to keep going?
How does man live,
if he really lives?
What does his brow hide?
Why doesn’t he tell,
at least in an undertone,
the whole of his secret self?
Why does man lie?
desperately lie
and lie and lie?
Why doesn’t he hush,
if falseness speaks
in all he feels?
Why does man cry?
What tears can ease
the pain of being man?
And what pain is man?
How can a man
discover he’s hurting?
Does man have a soul?
And who put something
in his soul that destroys it?
How does man know
what the soul is, his own
or another’s?
What is man good for?
For fertilizing flowers,
for spinning stories?
For serving man?
For creating God?
Does God know about man?
And does the devil know?
What makes man think
he’s a destiny, or origin?
What miracle is man?
What dream, what shadow?
But does man exist?
LIÇÃO DE COISAS / LESSON OF THINGS (1962)
DESTRUIÇÃO
Os amantes se amam cruelmente
e com se amarem tanto não se veem.
Um se beija no outro, refletido.
Dois amantes que são? Dois inimigos.
Amantes são meninos estragados
pelo mimo de amar: e não percebem
quanto se pulverizam no enlaçar-se,
e como o que era mundo volve a nada.
Nada, ninguém. Amor, puro fantasma
que os passeia de leve, assim a cobra
se imprime na lembrança de seu trilho.
E eles quedam mordidos para sempre.
Deixaram de existir, mas o existido
continua a doer eternamente.
DESTRUCTION
Lovers love each other cruelly
and love too much to see each other.
They kiss, in the other, their own reflection.
What are two lovers? Two enemies.
Lovers are children spoiled rotten
by love’s delights: they don’t realize
how they crumble with each embrace,
and how what was world turns into nothing.
Nothing, nobody. Love’s a pure phantom
that lightly passes over them,
like a snake imprinting its path on memory.
And they both remain forever bitten.
They’ve ceased to exist, but what existed
continues to ache eternally.
CERÂMICA
Os cacos da vida, colados, formam uma estranha xícara.
Sem uso,
ela nos espia do aparador.
PORCELAIN
The shards of life, glued together, form a strange teacup.
Unused,
it quietly observes us from the sideboard.
SCIENCE FICTION
O marciano encontrou-me na rua
e teve medo de minha impossibilidade humana.
Como pode existir, pensou consigo, um ser
que no existir põe tamanha anulação de existência?
Afastou-se o marciano, e persegui-o.
Precisava dele como de um testemunho.
Mas, recusando o colóquio, desintegrou-se
no ar constelado de problemas.
E fiquei só em mim, de mim ausente.
SCIENCE FICTION
A Martian ran into me on the street
and recoiled at my human impossibility.
How, he wondered, can there be a being
who so negates existence in the act of existing?
The Martian walked off, and I followed.
I needed him as a kind of proof.
But he refused to talk, vanishing
into the problem-studded atmosphere.
And I was left by myself, absent from myself.
A FALTA QUE AMA / THE LOVING ABSENCE (1968)
O DEUS MAL INFORMADO
No caminho onde pisou um deus
há tanto tempo que o tempo não lembra
resta o sonho dos pés
sem peso
sem desenho.
Quem passe ali, na fração de segundo,
em deus se erige, insciente, deus faminto,
saudoso de existência.
Vai seguindo em demanda de seu rastro,
é um tremor radioso, uma opulência
de impossíveis, casulos do possível.
Mas a estrada se parte, se milparte,
a seta não aponta
destino algum, e o traço ausente
ao homem torna homem, novamente.
THE MISINFORMED GOD
On the road where a god walked
so long ago time has forgotten it
the dream of the god’s feet lingers
weightless
traceless.
Whoever goes that way becomes,
in a twinkling, a god unawares, a hungry
god, wistful for existence.
He keeps on, searching for his ancient
trail, a glowing tremor, a wealth
of impossibilities, cocoons of the possible.
But the road divides into a thousand roads,