Paulo Leminski

Meta(/other)poems
In planetary terms, writing Portuguese
is the same as being silent.
Leminski, 3 Languages
To be a poet, you have to much more than a poet.
Language must serve life, not language.

Paulo Leminski Filho was born in Curitiba, Paran, Brazil on August 24, 1944, and died of liver failure in the same city on June 7,
1989. Part of his education took place at a Benedictine monastery,
where he began his diplomatic relations with Greek, Latin, French,
English then Japanese and later, Russian. He never finished college. He worked as a teacher and in advertising, and taught judo. He
translated Joyce, Beckett, Mishima, Jarry, John Lennon, Petronius . . .
In youth a rigorous yet never quite orthodox concretist, his mature
attitude toward literature and his verbal invention are characterized by
the untranslatable title of his first commercially published book of
poems, Caprichos e Relaxos. The Portuguese noun capricho means
whim, caprice, fancy, fit. Capricho da natureza means
freak of nature. The verb caprichar means to perform carefully
and neatly, to perfect, to elaborate nicely. The phrase a capricho
means in a careful manner and neatly. The adjective caprichoso
means both meticulous and caprichous. The adjective relaxo
means relaxed. The noun relaxo means a discourse in verse.
Such wordplay is commonplace in Leminski.
He also wrote several novels, a collection of stories, four short biographies and many essays. He has been called the most complete
writer of his generation.
Leminski is most famous in Brazil for light poetry (mom would
say // boil, water! / fry, egg! / leak, sink! // and theyd obey)
and haiku. It would be ridiculous not to include examples of the more

famous Leminski. His political poetry is wonderful. His metapoems

are unlike any others I have seen. I believe the last poem in this collection to be one of the most beautiful poems ever written in any language.
I intend to translate at least sections of his novel Catatau (the Brazilian
Finnegans Wake) and his Metaformose (Metaphormosis), a prose meditation on Greek mythology, is forthcoming from this press.
His later poems increasingly concern themselves with death: ice,
snow, winter: the full moon alone in the sky is Narcissuss gorgon eye
on the world through his own protean reflection of Paulo Leminski
writing Portuguese words that say [W]riting Portuguese is the same
thing as being silent on a featureless blanket of Antarctic snow filled
with words frozen into such pallor that they shriek at Paulo Leminski
addressing us and himself through perhaps-himself as you.
Many younger Brazilian poets revere him. Others have tried to diminish his reputation. In the city where he was born, he is a cultural icon. If he
were alive today, he would remind us with utmost rude hilarity that reverence, if due at all, should not be owed him, but his work. As for the opposite of reverence, hes no longer able to defend himself with irony and
(often sad) laughter.
He was the fastest poem in the south, this village idiot, this Zen
Anarchist bandit who knew latin, this erudite blackguard, rogue
judoka, oxymoronic inhabitant of every artificial paradise (especially,
and always, poetry), dead so young of liver failure, Briareos
Hecatoncheiros Heautontimoros, this 100-wide-eyed mutt from Curitiba, Paran, mouth burnt by his own red anguish, that cleansing ember, this brasileiro the gods adored.
Ive tried to keep rhyme where it exists in the original and have occasionally added rhyme and meter where they do not exist. Capitalization, punctuation and lack thereof are mostly Leminskis. Some of the
translations are so free that they should be called imitations. The selection is achronological. I wanted very much to include the Portuguese originals, but lack of time, space, money and permission have
forbidden it.
As far as I know, the only translations of Leminskis poetry previously
available in this country are in the useful but unsatisfying anthology Nothing the Sun Could not Explain, published by Sun & Moon Press in 1997.
The poems in that anthology were well-translated by Regina Alfarano,
Nelson Ascher, Robert Creeley, Michael Palmer, Charles Perrone and
Dana Stevens. Ive made great use of those translations, and hope that my
work does them proud. Its worth noting that one of Leminskis poems in

that anthology is a visual poem that has been stripped of its graphic component; another is a lyric to a song.
Manoel Ricardo de Lima and Rodrigo Garcia Lopes looked closely
at my work, cleared up difficulties, made a great many suggestions for
improvement, and listened while I explained and agonized over and
finally altered my myriad mistranslations. Any remaining blunders are
wholly my own.
Im also very grateful to Elson Fres, the Brazilian poet and webmaster, who published early versions of these translations on his website PopBox (www.popbox.hpg.ig.com.br); and to the editors of
LVNG, who published several of these translations in issue 10.

LIMITS ADRIFT
POETRY: words set to music (Dante
via Pound), a journey to the
unknown (Mayakovsky), gists
and piths (Pound), saying
the unsayable (Goethe), language
turned toward its own
materiality (Jakobson),
permanent hesitation between sound and
sense (Paul Valry), foundation of
being by means of word (Heidegger),
humanitys original religion
(Novalis), the best words in the
best order (Coleridge), emotion
recollected in tranquility
(Wordsworth), science and passion
(Alfred de Vigny), is made with
words, not ideas (Mallarm),
music made with ideas
(Ricardo Reis), a
true feigning (Fernando
Pessoa), criticism of life (Matthew
Arnold), word-thing (Sartre),
language in the state of savage
purity (Octavio Paz), poetry is to
inspire (Bob Dylan), language
design (Dcio Pignatari), the
impossible made possible (Garca
Lorca), what gets lost in
translation (Robert Frost), liberty
of my language (Paulo
Leminski) . . .

a letter an ember athwart

inside the text
cloud full of my rain
crosses the desert to me
the mountain way
the sea between the two
a syllable a sob
a yes a no a cry
signs to say us
when we are no more

nothing the sun

could never explain
all the moon more
chic yet still plain
such flowers will not
fade in the rain

if it werent this
itd be less
if it werent so much
itd be almost

all
i
read
bugs
me
when
i
hear
rita
lee

concerning how
the pole jan korneziowsky
put on the persona / costume
of joseph conrad
and became lord jim / childe harold
one of these days i wanna be
a great english poet
of the last century
saying
o sky o sea o folk o destiny
fight in india, 1866
go down in a clandestine shipwreck

between external duty

and eternal doubt
my commercial
heart goes
roundabout

Came the hard way down

the neverending line,
line striking stone,
word kickin round the corner,
tiny empty line,
a line a life, entire,
word, word of mine.

that pauloleminski
s a rabid mutt
either we kill him
with clubs and rocks
and a stake
up his butt
in a shipwreck
or else hes likely
the little prick
to make it rain
on our picnic

a poem
not gotten
is worthy of note
supreme
dignity
of a drifting boat

winters
all i feel
livings
for real

back then
us folks were gonna be homer
the work an iliad no less
but then
it got a little harder
wed settle for a rimbaud
an ungaretti a fernando any old pessoa
a lorca an eluard a ginsberg
and then
we ended up the provincial
poeticule we always were
behind so many masks
time treated like flowers

two village idiots

one spends his days
kicking lampposts to see if theyll turn on
the other his nights
rubbing words
off white paper
every village has an idiot
it treats with sympathy
in a little while i know
theyll be treating me

a good poem
takes years:
five playing soccer,
five more studying sanskrit,
six rolling rocks,
nine falling for your neighbor,
seven taking a beating,
four going it alone,
three changing cities,
ten changing the subject,
an eternity, me and you
along together

i never wanted to be
a good customer
asking for this or that
red wine
thanks
hasta la vista
i wanted to go in
both feet planted
on the doormans chest
telling the mirror
shut up
and the clock
hands down

TOMBSTONE 1
epitaph for the body
Here lies a great poet.
He left nothing written.
This quiet is his complete
works, and he knows it.

TOMBSTONE 2
epitaph for the soul
here lies an artist
master of disaster
living
at the intensity of art
shot his heart
god forgive him
his disguises

SOME HAIKUS
moon in the sky
did you shine so high
over auschwitz?

enormous night
everything sleeps
but your name

silk curtains
the wind comes through
without asking

night
drips a star in my eye
goes by

two leaves on my sandal

autumn wants
to walk too

when done,
nude
as come

lifes a trip
pity im just
passing through

all said
nothing done
said and done

windy afternoon
even the trees
want to come in

MALLARM BASH
a leaping frog
will never abolish
the old pond

DISENCOUNTRARIES
I told the word to rhyme,
but it didnt obey me.
It talked about sea, sky, a rose,
all Greek, all silence, prose.
It seemed beside itself;
it seemed the silent syllable.
I told the sentence: dream;
it went into a maze.
In poetry, this is what must be:
you mobilize an army
and fell a fallen dynasty.

the new
doesnt shock me now
nothing new
under the sun
just the same
old egg as always
hatching the same
old new

1.
Zealous beasts keep minarets,
constellations are signs.
No starshadow;
Comets are solemn;
the moon an enigma.
Celestial bodies in contact,
hard light of hierarchy on high.
2.
The stars are restless,
Lord, today;
today, the sky shuts down.
The Patrons
murmur low.
None shall force the Zodiac.
Mars encrusted with shields.
The moon is filthy,
you must believe in everything,
stars roun.
Mercury is rebelling,
of Saturn, I know nothing.
For today mine art is silent
Silence thyself, Lord,
life whirls about thy fist.
I testify to this.

DANGER: SHIPWRECK AHEAD

This page, for instance,
wasnt made to be read.
It was made to be pallid,
a merely stolen Iliad,
a thing kept quiet,
a leaf long fallen
going back to its branch.
It was made to be beach,
Andromeda, maybe, Antarctica,
Himalaya, sensed syllable,
it was made to be ultimate,
something yet unmade.
Words brought from afar
by the waters of the Nile,
one day this page, papyrus,
will have to be translated
into symbol, Sanskrit,
into every Indians dialect,
will have to say good day
just to whats murmured at the ear,
will have to be rough stone
where someone drops the glass.
Isnt that how life is?

ANCHIO SON PITTORE

fra angelico
when hed paint
a madonna and child
always knelt and prayed
as if a boy again
he prayed before the work
as if it were a sin
to paint that Lady
with his knees unbent
he prayed as if the work
were gods, not mens

the sun writes

all over your face
the name
of another race
hides in
every grape
histories of sky,
wind and rain

ICEBERG
An arctic poetry,
of course, is my desire.
A pallid praxis,
three lines of ice.
An exomorphic sentence
where any living sentence
would be no longer viable.
Sentence. No. None at all.
A null lyric,
reduced to pure minimum,
the spirits blinking,
the unique unique thing.
But I speak, and speaking, incite
a swarm of equivocations
(from a monologue-hive?).
Yes, winter, were alive.

BEYOND SOUL (A Gram Later)

My far-off hearts going on again.
Its waving. It wants to come back.
On my chest, a bronze plaque:
NOT HIRING. NO VACANCY.
What goods that little thing?
It wont stop beating.
Its acting like a clock
gone totally insane.
Who needs that weepy gadget?
Im fine, far as I can see,
and emptiness outside flows
smoothly into me.

FULL PAUSE
Place where one makes
whats already made,
the pages white,
sum of all text,
there was a time
when, writing,
one needed
a page exempt.
No page at all
has ever been clean.
Even the most Saharan,
Antarctic, mean.
Theres never been
a page all blank.
Deep down in such
pallor all shriek.

MORE OR LESS ON TIME

Sentenced to be precise,
if I could just be a vague
will-o-wisp over a lake,
equally deceptive
to flier, swimmer, liar,
mosquito, frog, snake.
Sentenced, to be precise,
to a time so refined,
a time so timeless
it might as well be space,
myself precise, how surprising,
t-square, ruler, compass,
things I dont want, wanting.

INVERNACULAR
This language isnt mine.
Its plain as day.
When meaning goes away,
a word stays behind.
Maybe Im just lying.
Or am I lying truth?
So I say myselfjust,
MaybeI could barely say.
This isnt my tongue.
The language I speak mutes
a distant song,
the voice, beyond, not a word.
The dialect you utilize
on the left bank of the phrase,
thats the speech that lusofies
me, half, maybe, inside.

A WING AND A PRAYER

Fly with a wounded wing?
When I speak I sprout wings.
What have I done living?
Not much when time
was all my time
and past time,
nightmare, pastime,
were all book-time.
And then, self-mastering,
faced with choosing
the abyss, a beginning
or this tale unending . . .
Wounded wing, wounded wing,
my space, my hero, my aching wing.
Flying isnt hurting.

insect on paper
insists
i trace | a circle | around it
only
the circle
exists

lua na gua = moon in/on the water

alguma lua = some moon, any moon
lua alguma = no moon at all

the alphabet animal

has 23 paws
or almost
wherever it goes
words come
about
and phrases
from phrases
wings come forth
and words
a soft wind
the alphabet animal
goes by
whats unwritten stays behind

outside up there
the sky made
all the stars it could
in the kitchen
under the lamp
mom picked over
beans and rice
andromeda this way
altair that
sirius this way
morning star that

the glorious charger

sees the shadow of the lash
and bolts in chevaline splendor
through labyrinths of crine
incited by the wind
annuls chimera space
consuming time
a pyre incinerates heroes
there were pulsions of sky
and avidity over the sea
cerulean polar plains
jaguar-hide sky
and zodiacal slides
dolorous pelagic plains
where fish do graze
and the octopus-knot slaughters the sun
Here fable founders
in wave-tossed nausea
wounds its hooves against the stars
and pierced by the blades
of horoscopic beasts
becomes a little turbid
vigil falls into dream,
lucid and sudden: a martyr
Remain on earth, horse
eye full of stars
straw body of the waves
and the heart in the breast
a slumbering top!

i could spend
my whole life like this
watching the moon
with a mouthful of light
in my head not
a shadow of the word glory

PHANTOM OPERA
I have nothing
Nothing can be taken from me.
Im the ex-stranger,
one come unbidden,
a cat, and gone
without a sound.

this planet sometimes tires,

black souls white faces,
their nights of vicious fighting,
dirty afternoons of sluggish water,
minutes of light and fear
house full of sweetness,
waves clatter on in pain
and what once was sour
now walks upon this planet
like stepping on a flower

TIMES VS. BAD TIMES

a flashback
a flashback in a flashback
a flashback in a flashback
of a flashback
a flashback in the third flashback
memory falls into memory
stone flowers in smooth water
everything wearies (flashback)
except the memory of the memory
of the memory
of the memory

DIONYSUS ARES APHRODITE

eternal youth
for the cruelest gods
who give us to drink
in the self-same chalice
wine, blood and sperm

wash me out
thin me down
mix me up
until
after me
after us
after everything
nothings left
but the charm

CIRCLE
weary of polished phrases
to pale-faced angels
palmtrees clapping
at passing parades
now i want a storm
of stony words
raining blows

i so wanted to be
un pote maudit
masses in misery
while i dig deep
i so wanted to be
un pote engage
my face enflamed
by the breath of we
but look at me now
salting watery soup
barely enough for two

for freedom and struggle

bury me with trotskyists
in the mass grave of idealists
wherein rest those
power couldnt twist
bury me with my heart
on the banks of the river
where the wounded knee strikes
the stone of passions fever

old Leon and Natalia in Coyoacn

this time therell be no snow like in Petrograd that day
the sky will be clear and the sun will shine
you sleeping and me dreaming
therell be no cassocks or cossacks like in Petrograd that day
only you naked and me like i was born
me sleeping and you dreaming
therell be no more shouting crowd like in Petrograd that day
just silence for us two blue murmurs
me and you sleeping and dreaming
therell never be another day like in Petrograd that day
nothing like one day going through another day coming
you and me dreaming and sleeping

as if i were julio plaza

pleasure
of pure perception
senses
be critique
of reason

i never know for certain

if im a boy of doubt
or a man of faith
certainties live in the wind
only doubts go on foot

versemills
moved by the wind
in nights of bohemia
come the day
whatever i say
ll be poetry

the winds a god too

seen only in effect
panicking trees
banners
trembling water
a boat sailing off
he teaches me
to suffer out of sight
to silently enjoy
my own passing
never the same
place twice
to that god who lifts
the dust of the road
and teaches it to fly
i consecrate this sigh
may he raise it well
till it becomes a gale