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  Education by Stone

  Selected Poems

  João Cabral de Melo Neto

  Translated by Richard Zenith

  archipelago books

  Copyright © 2005 Archipelago Books

  First Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

  in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cabral de Melo Neto, João, 1920–1999

  [Poems. English & Portuguese. Selections]

  Education by stone : selected poems / by João Cabral de Melo Neto ; translated

  from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-9357-4455-9

  I. Zenith, Richard. II. Title.

  PQ9697.M463A285 2005

  869’.1’42 — dc22200402075

  Archipelago Books

  239 West 12th Street, 3c

  New York, NY 10014

  www.archipelagobooks.org

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

  1045 Westgate Drive

  St. Paul, MN 55114

  www.cbsd.com

  Education by Stone: Selected Poems of João Cabral de Melo Neto

  Copyright © The Estate of João Cabral

  All rights reserved

  English Translation of the Work © 2005 Richard Zenith

  Jacket art: Untitled, 1959. Mark Rothko

  Copyright © 2004 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

  Coll. Kate Rothko Prizel

  Book Design by David Bullen Design

  Printed by The Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vermont

  This publication is made possible with public funds from the

  New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency.

  Contents

  About the Selection and Translation

  Acknowledgments

  fromPEDRA DO SONO / STONE OF SLEEP (1942)

  Windows

  Poetry

  Water and the Poem

  fromO ENGENHEIRO / THE ENGINEER (1945)

  The Dancer

  The Engineer

  The Table

  The Office Clerk

  The Lesson of Poetry

  fromPSICOLOGIA DA COMPOSIÇÃO / PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPOSITION (1947)

  Psychology of Composition

  Antiode

  O CÃO SEM PLUMAS / THE DOG WITHOUT FEATHERS (1950)

  fromPAISAGENS COM FIGURAS / LANDSCAPES WITH FIGURES (1956)

  Tourist Pitch for Recife

  The Wind in the Canefield

  Cemetery in Pernambuco (Toritama)

  Encounter with a Poet

  Cemetery in Pernambuco (São Lourenço da Mata)

  A Few Matadors

  Cemetery in Pernambuco (Nossa Senhora da Luz)

  fromQUADERNA / FOUR-SPOT (1960)

  Cemetery in Alagoas (Trapiche da Barra)

  The Woman and the House

  Cemetery in Paraíba (between Flores and Princesa)

  The Word Silk

  Cemetery in Pernambuco (Floresta do Navio)

  Cemetery in Pernambuco (Custódia)

  fromDOIS PARLAMENTOS / TWO PARLIAMENTS (1961)

  Party at the Manor House

  fromSERIAL / SERIAL (1961)

  Yes Against Yes

  The Egg

  fromA EDUCAÇÃO PELA PEDRA / EDUCATION BY STONE (1966)

  The Sea and the Canefield

  Education by Stone

  On Sitting / Being-in-the-World

  Weaving the Morning

  Tale of an Architect

  Speechless Rivers

  The Canefield and the Sea

  Rivers for a Day

  Psychoanalysis of Sugar

  The Kingdoms of Yellow

  On a Monument to Aspirin

  Inhabiting Time

  For the Book Fair

  fromMUSEU DE TUDO / CATCHALL MUSEUM (1975)

  The Insomnia of Monsieur Teste

  W. H. Auden

  The Unconfessing Artist

  Berceo’s Catechism

  The Waters of Recife

  The Architecture of Sugarcane

  Rilke in New Poems

  The Autograph

  Proust and His Book

  fromA ESCOLA DAS FACAS / THE SCHOOL OF KNIVES (1980)

  Plantation Boy

  Horácio

  The Voice of the Canefield

  Fort Orange, Itamaracá

  The Voice of the Coconut Grove

  The School of Knives

  The Sandbank at Sirinhaém

  Sugarcane Girl

  Sugarcane and the Eighteenth Century

  fromAGRESTES / ROUGH & RUDE (1985)

  The Nothing That Is

  Banks & Cathedrals

  Renewed Homage to Marianne Moore

  Sandwater

  In the Páramo

  The Bed and the Car

  Right to Death

  A Question of Punctuation

  fromCRIME NA CALLE RELATOR / CRIME ON THE CALLE RELATOR (1987)

  The Ironware Shop in Carmona

  Notes to the Poems

  Afterword

  About the Selection and Translation

  João Cabral de Melo Neto’s poetry was at its strongest between 1950 and 1980, and the selection presented here is weighted accordingly. His last book, Sevilha Andando, was published in 1989. João Cabral said he imagined writing poems that could only be read silently, and he claimed to be incapable of writing poetry without seeing the words on the page. In fact he quit writing it after he went blind, in the 1990s, and he described himself to reporters as an “ex-writer.”

  Rather than offering excerpts from the author’s various long narrative poems, two such poems are presented in their entirety. Elizabeth Bishop’s translation of sections from Morte e Vida Severina [The Death and Life of a Severino] are included in her The Complete Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969) and in João Cabral’s Selected Poetry, 1937–1990 (Wesleyan, 1994).

  The Afterword examines João Cabral’s poetics and discusses a number of the poems translated here. Lest readers imagine that some words were accidentally left out, let it be noted that a few poems —“The Dog without Feathers,” “Weaving the Morning” and “Banks and Cathedrals” are examples — employ syntactical ellipses, a device that I have usually tried to replicate in the translation.

  Ten of the translations in this volume were first published, with some significant differences, in the Wesleyan Selected. Others were published in Paris Review, Grand Street, The Atlantic, Partisan, The New England Review, Chicago Review, and World Literature Today. Much of the Afterword was adapted from an article on João Cabral de Melo Neto published in Latin American Writers, Supplement I, Scribner’s, 2002. Readers may refer to that article for a fuller treatment of the poet and his work, as well as a bibliography.

  Acknowledgments

  I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting this project with a translation grant in 1985. I also thank the Endowment for its patience. The John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund kindly provided a supplementary grant. It was David Haberly who encouraged me to do an entire book and to apply for funding.

  Dora Feiguin, Elizabeth Marques, Manuela Rocha and Marcia Rodrigues graciously clarified difficult passages. Several people who provided practical help or moral support are no longer with us: Frank MacShane, Haroldo de Campos, and the poet himself, João Cabral de Melo Neto, who said he hated to see translations of his poetry into languages he knew. He tolerated me anyway.

  R.Z.

  Education by Stone />
  Selected Poems

  from

  Pedra do sono / Stone of Sleep

  1942

  Janelas

  Há um homem sonhando

  numa praia; um outro

  que nunca sabe as datas;

  há um homem fugindo

  de uma árvore; outro que perdeu

  seu barco ou seu chapéu;

  há um homem que é soldado;

  outro que faz de avião;

  outro que vai esquecendo

  sua hora seu mistério

  seu medo da palavra véu;

  e em forma de navio

  há ainda um que adormeceu.

  Windows

  There’s a man dreaming

  on a beach, another

  who never remembers dates.

  There’s a man running away

  from a tree, another missing

  his boat or his hat.

  There’s a man who’s a soldier,

  another who acts like an airplane,

  another who keeps forgetting

  his time his mystery

  his fear of the word veil.

  And there’s yet another who,

  stretched out like a ship, fell asleep.

  Poesia

  Ó jardins enfurecidos,

  pensamentos palavras sortilégio

  sob uma lua contemplada;

  jardins de minha ausência

  imensa e vegetal;

  ó jardins de um céu

  viciosamente freqüentado:

  onde o mistério maior

  do sol da luz da saúde?

  Poetry

  O raging gardens,

  thoughts words sorcery

  under a contemplated moon,

  O gardens of my vast

  vegetable absence,

  gardens of an enchanting,

  addictive sky:

  where is the larger mystery

  of light the sun health?

  O poema e a água

  As vozes líquidas do poema

  convidam ao crime

  ao revólver.

  Falam para mim de ilhas

  que mesmo os sonhos

  não alcançam.

  O livro aberto nos joelhos

  o vento nos cabelos

  olho o mar.

  Os acontecimentos de água

  põem-se a se repetir

  na memória.

  Water and the Poem

  The poem’s liquid voices

  lure me to crime

  to a revolver.

  They tell me of islands

  not even dreams

  can reach.

  With open book on my knees

  and wind in my hair

  I look at the sea.

  What happens in water

  starts repeating

  in memory.

  from

  O engenheiro / The Engineer

  1945

  A bailarina

  A bailarina feita

  de borracha e pássaro

  dança no pavimento

  anterior do sonho.

  A três horas de sono,

  mais além dos sonhos,

  nas secretas câmaras

  que a morte revela.

  Entre monstros feitos

  a tinta de escrever,

  a bailarina feita

  de borracha e pássaro.

  Da diária e lenta

  borracha que mastigo.

  Do inseto ou pássaro

  que não sei caçar.

  The Dancer

  The dancer made

  of rubber and bird

  dances on the floor

  before the dream.

  Three hours into sleep,

  beyond all dreams,

  in the secret chambers

  which death reveals.

  Among monsters made

  with writing ink,

  the dancer made

  of rubber and bird.

  Of the slow and daily

  eraser I chew.

  Of the insect or bird

  I cannot catch.

  O engenheiro

  A luz, o sol, o ar livre

  envolvem o sonho do engenheiro.

  O engenheiro sonha coisas claras:

  superfícies, tênis, um copo de água.

  O lápis, o esquadro, o papel;

  o desenho, o projeto, o número:

  o engenheiro pensa o mundo justo,

  mundo que nenhum véu encobre.

  (Em certas tardes nós subíamos

  ao edifício. A cidade diária,

  como um jornal que todos liam,

  ganhava um pulmão de cimento e vidro.)

  A água, o vento, a claridade,

  de um lado o rio, no alto as nuvens,

  situavam na natureza o edifício

  crescendo de suas forças simples.

  The Engineer

  Light, sun and the open air

  surround the dream of the engineer.

  The engineer dreams clear things:

  surfaces, tennis, a glass of water.

  A pencil, a T-square, paper;

  designs, projects, numbers.

  The engineer sees the world just

  as it is, without any veils.

  (On certain days we went up

  the building. The daily city,

  like a daily paper read by all,

  was gaining a lung of cement and glass.)

  The water, the wind, the brightness,

  the river on one side and the clouds on high

  made a place in nature for the building,

  growing by its own simple strength.

  A mesa

  O jornal dobrado

  sobre a mesa simples;

  a toalha limpa,

  a louça branca

  e fresca como o pão.

  A laranja verde:

  tua paisagem sempre,

  teu ar livre, sol

  de tuas praias; clara

  e fresca como o pão.

  A faca que aparou

  teu lápis gasto;

  teu primeiro livro

  cuja capa é branca

  e fresca como o pão.

  E o verso nascido

  de tua manhã viva,

  de teu sonho extinto,

  ainda leve, quente

  e fresco como o pão.

  The Table

  The folded newspaper

  on the simple table;

  the tablecloth clean,

  the dishes white

  and fresh like bread.

  The green-skinned orange:

  your unfailing landscape,

  your open air, the sun

  of your beaches: bright

  and fresh like bread.

  The knife that sharpened

  your spent pencil;

  your first book

  whose cover is white

  and fresh like bread.

  And the verse born

  of your living morning,

  of your finished dream:

  still warm, light

  and fresh like bread.

  O funcionário

  No papel de serviço

  escrevo teu nome

  (estranho à sala

  como qualquer flor)

  mas a borracha

  vem e apaga.

  Apaga as letras,

  o carvão do lápis,

  não o nome,

  vivo animal,

  planta viva

  a arfar no cimento.

  O macio monstro

  impõe enfim o vazio

  à página branca;

  calma à mesa,

  sono ao lápis,

  aos arquivos, poeira;

  fome à boca negra

  das gavetas, sede

  ao mata-borrão;

  a mim, a prosa

  procurada, o conforto

  da poesia ida.

  The Office Clerk

  I write your name

  (alien to this of
fice

  like any flower)

  on the paper for official

  business, but the eraser

  comes and deletes it.

  It deletes the letters,

  the pencil lead,

  but not your name,

  the live animal,

  the live plant

  panting in the cement.

  The soft monster

  finally imposes

  emptiness on the page,

  stillness on the table,

  sleep on the pencil,

  and dust on the files;

  hunger on the black

  mouths of drawers, thirst

  on the blotting paper,

  and on me the prose

  of effort, my consolation

  for the poetry that fled.

  A lição da poesia

  1

  Toda a manhã consumida

  como um sol imóvel

  diante da folha em branco:

  princípio do mundo, lua nova.

  Já não podias desenhar

  sequer uma linha;

  um nome, sequer uma flor

  desabrochava no verão da mesa:

  nem no meio-dia iluminado,

  cada dia comprado,

  do papel, que pode aceitar,

  contudo, qualquer mundo.

  2

  A noite inteira o poeta

  em sua mesa, tentando

  salvar da morte os monstros

  germinados em seu tinteiro.

  Monstros, bichos, fantasmas

  de palavras, circulando,

  urinando sobre o papel,

  sujando-o com seu carvão.

  Carvão de lápis, carvão

  da idéia fixa, carvão

  da emoção extinta, carvão

  consumido nos sonhos.

  3

  A luta branca sobre o papel

  que o poeta evita,

  luta branca onde corre o sangue

  de suas veias de água salgada.

  A física do susto percebida

  entre os gestos diários;

  susto das coisas jamais pousadas

  porém imóveis — naturezas vivas.

  E as vinte palavras recolhidas

  nas águas salgadas do poeta

  e de que se servirá o poeta

  em sua máquina útil.

  Vinte palavras sempre as mesmas

  de que conhece o funcionamento,