OT: The Big World (a poem)

[Guest guest]

This is my own translation of a poem by Drummond de Andrade. I

know poetry is always off-topic, but I was thinking of New Orleans

and compassion fatigue, among other things. The poem has maybe a

gloomy and pessimistic tone all the way, but it lightens up at the

end showing perhaps the tunnel, too, has an end.

JC

The Big World

No, my heart is not bigger than the world.

It is much smaller.

It cannot even hold my own sorrows.

That is why I like to tell about myself.

That is why I strip off,

I shout myself out,

I show up in the newspapers,

and expose myself so crudely in the bookshops:

I need everybody.

Yes, my heart is very small.

Only now do I realize

that it has not enough room

to hold the people.

The people remain on the outside, in the street.

The street is huge. Bigger, much bigger than I expected it to be.

But even the street cannot hold all the people.

The street is also smaller than the world.

The world is big.

You know how big the world is.

You know the ships carrying oil and books,

meat and cotton.

You have seen the different colours men can take,

the different pains they can carry.

You know how hard it is to suffer it all,

to heap it all in the bosom of a single man

and not cause it to crack.

Close your eyes now and forget.

Listen to the water on the glass.

It is so quiet. It does not convey anything.

It trickles through your hands

so quietly. But it floods everything.

Will the submersed cities rise again?

Will the submersed men come back again?

My heart does not know the answer.

Stupid, ridiculous and frail is my heart.

Only now do I find

how miserable it is to ignore certain things.

(In my loneliness as an individual

I unlearned the language

by which men communicate among themselves.)

Long ago I used to hear the angels,

the sonatas, the poems, the pathetic confessions.

I have never really heard the human voice.

Actually I have been leading a very meager life.

Long ago I used to travel

in imaginary countries, where it is so easy to live,

on islands free of problems,

though actually exhausting and inducing suicide.

Friends of mine did go to the islands.

Islands lead men astray.

However, a few of them were saved

and came back to bring the news

that the world, the big world,

is growing every day,

amid fire and love.

If so, my heart can also grow.

Amid love and fire,

amid life and fire,

my heart will grow ten meters and burst.

Oh, life to come, we shall forge you out of this!

Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987)