VARIO BURNOS

João Cabral de Melo Neto

or:

usefulness of fixed ideas

Translated by Kerry Shawn Keys

Poet, critic and translator João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999) has established himself as one of the most respected and ifluential poets in twentienth century Brazilian literature. During his lifetime, Cabral has served as a diplomat in Spain, England and Switzerland and as an administrative officer in the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture. He has translated works by Gonzalo de Barceo, George Herbert, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and others.

Just like a bullet

buried in the body,

pressing down one side

of the dead man:

just like a bullet

of heaviest lead

in the muscle of a man,

weighing him down on one side;

like a bullet with

its own bolt,

a bullet with

a living heart,

a heart like a clock

sunk deep in the body,

like a living clock

that always rebels,

a clock having

the cutting edge of a knife

and all the impiety

of a steel-blue blade;

just like a knife

without packet or sheathe

transformed into part

of your anatomy,

an intimate knife,

a knife for internal use,

inhabiting the body

like the very skeleton

of the man who would have one

and always, full of pain,

of the man who would wound himself

against his own bones.

Be it a bullet, clock,

or furious blade,

it nevertheless an absence

that such a man carries.

But that which isn’t

in him is like a bullet:

it contains the iron of lead,

the same compact fiber.

That which isn’t in him

is like a clock

beating in its cage,

without fatigue, without rest.

That which isn’t in him

is like the jealous

presence of a knife,

of any unseasoned knife.

For this reason the best

of the symbols employed

is a cruel blade

(better if a Sheffield):

because nothing can mark

this ravenous absence

like the image of a knife

that would only have its blade,

because nothing indicates better

this greedy absence

than the image of a knife

reduced to its mouth,

than the image of a knife

entirely delivered

to hunger for those things

that are felt by knives.

Most astonishing

is the life of such a knife:

a knife or any metaphor

can be cultivated.

Even more astonishing yet

is its culture:

it doesn’t grow from what it eats,

but rather from what it fasts.

You can abandon it,

that knife in the guts:

you will never find it

with an empty mouth.

From nothing it distills

acid and vinegar

and other tricks

peculiar to sabers.

And like the knife it is,

fervent and brisk,

without assistance it fires

its perverse mechanism:

the stript blade which grows

as it wears down,

the less it sleeps

the less sleep there is,

the more it cuts

the sharper its edge

and it lives to produce itself

in others like a spring.

(For the life of such a knife

is measured in reverse:

be it a clock or bullet,

or be it the knife itself.)

Careful! with the object,

with the object be careful,

though it is only a bullet

studded with lead,

because the teeth of the bullet

are already quite blunt,

and quite easily become

more blunt in the muscle.

Take more care, however,

when it becomes a clock

with its heart

burning and spasmodic.

Pay special attention

that the pulse of the clock

and the pulse of the blood

don’t interlock,

that its copper, so polished,

does not enmesh its pace

with blood that already beats

without a bite.

But if it is the knife,

O, be more careful:

the sheathe of the body

may absorb the steel.

Likewise, its edge, at times

tends to get hoarse

and there are cases in which blades

degenerate into leather.

Of grave importance is that the knife

not lose its passion

nor be corrupted

by its wooden haft.

And at times, this knife

turns itself off.

And that’s what’s called

the low tide of the knife.

Perhaps it isn’t turned off,

perhaps it only sleeps.

If the image is a clock,

its bee ceases to buzz.

But whether asleep or turned off:

when such an engine stops,

the entire soul sours

like an alkaloid,

quite similar to a neutral

substance like felt, which

composes the souls that lack

the sharp knife-skeleton.

And the sword of this blade,

its flame flashing before,

and the nervous clock,

and the indigestible bullet,

all of them follow the process

of the blade that blinds:

they become knife, clock

or bullet of wood,

bullet of leather or cloth,

or a clock of pitch,

they become the knife without backbone,

the clay-knife, the honey-knife.

(Yet, when the tide

is no longer expected,

the knife comes in

with all its crystals.)

It is necessary to keep

the knife well hidden

because in dampness

its flash dies out

(in dampness created by

the spit of conversation,

the more intimate it is

the stickier it gets).

Caution is necessary

even if the life coal that

inhabits you isn’t a knife,

but a clock or a bullet.

For they can’t withstand

all climates:

their savage flesh

demands rough quarters.

But if you must expose them

the better to bear them,

let it be in some barren plain

or wasteland in the open air.

Never remove them in air

occupied by birds.

It must be a harsh air,

without shade, without vertigo.

And never at night,

never in night’s fertile hands.

Let it be in the acids

of the sun, in the torrid sun,

in the fever of this sun

that turns grass to wire,

that makes a sponge of the wind

and makes thirst out of earth.

Whether it be that bullet

or any other image,

even if a clock be

the wound that keeps,

or even a knife

that wants only its blade

(of all images, the most

voracious and graphic),

no one will be able

to remove it from his body

whether it be a bullet,

a clock, or a knife,

and the race of the blade

is also unimportant:

whether a tame table knife

or the ferocious bowie.

If he who suffers its rape

can’t pull it out,

how could the hand

of a neighbor remove it.

The entire medicine

of arithmetical tweezers

and numerical knives

can do nothing against it.

Neither can the police

with all their surgeons,

nor can time itself

with all its bandages.

And neither can the hand

which, without knowledge,

planted the bullet, clock or knife,

images of fury.

This bullet that a man

carries at times in his flesh

makes him that keeps it

less rarefied.

And what this clock implies

for the impetuous and the meek

is that, when locked in the body,

it makes it more alert.

If the metaphor is a knife,

carried in the muscle,

knives inside a man

give him greater force.

The cutting edge of a knife

biting a man’s body

arms his body

with another body or dagger,

for by keeping alive

all the springs of the soul

it provides the blade’s attack,

and the bayonet’s sexual heat,

and, in addition, a body

coiled tightly on guard,

insoluble in sleep

and in everything empty,

as in that story

told by someone

of a man who fashioned

a memory so precise

that he could preserve

in his palm, for thirteen years,

the weight of a hand,

feminine, pressing.

When he who suffers words

labors with words, the clock,

the bullet, and especially

the knife are useful.

Men who generally

work in this business

keep only extinct words

in the warehouse:

some words suffocate

under the dust,

others go unnoticed

among the great knots;

words that lost in their use

all the metal and sand

that holds the attention

which wants to leave.

For only this knife

will give such a worker

eyes more fresh

for his vocabulary

and only this knife

and the example of its tooth

will teach him to obtain

from sick material

that quality which all knives

keep as their essence:

a ferocious acuteness,

a certain electricity,

plus the pure violence

that they have in such precision,

the taste of the desert,

the style of knives.

This hostile blade,

this clock, this bullet,

if it makes more alert

all those who guard it,

it also knows to wake

the objects around it,

even the very liquids

begin to grow bones.

For whoever suffers the knife,

all the sluggish matter,

all that was vague,

acquires nerves, edges.

Everything acquires

a more intense life—

the sharpness of a needle,

the presence of a wasp.

In each thing the side

that cuts reveals itself,

and they that looked

as round as wax

now strip themselves

from the callus of routine,

they set out to function

with all their corners.

Among so many things

that already can’t sleep,

the man whom the knife cuts

and to whom it gives it edge,

suffering that blade

and its thrust so cold,

he passes, lucid and sleepless, he goes

cutting edge against cutting edge.

Back from that knife,

friend or enemy,

which compresses a man more

the more it chews him;

back from that knife

carried so secretly,

and which must be carried

like the hidden skeleton;

from the image where I stayed

the longest, that of the blade,

because of all the images

it is surely the most greedy;

once back from the knife

one ascends to the other image,

that of the clock

gnawing under the flesh,

and from it to the other,

the first, that of the bullet,

which has a thick tooth

but a strong bite,

and from there to the memory

that dressed such images

and is much more intense

than the power of language,

and at last to the presence

of reality, the first,

that which created memory

and still creates it, still,

at last to reality, the first,

and of such violence

that in trying to grasp it

every image splits.

Translated from the Portuguese by Kerry Shawn Keys

(João Cabral de Melo Neto. A knife all blade. Pine Press, 1980)

Published by arrangement with the author