Why is it the same modesty
in writing as in defecating?
No modesty applies to eating
to drinking, to incorporating
and, usually, there’s more modesty
in the asking than in the giving.
Why then does the writer,
if writing is after all a giving,
avoid having people nearby
and try to be alone?
to write is to reach the extreme
of oneself; whoever is there
writing from within this nudity,
the most naked that one can be,
does not want others to see
what there is of grimace,
of tics, of revealing gestures,
of little that is spectacular
in the skewed vision of a soul
in the strain of creation.
(But in the writer’s modesty
the most curious is that
the modesty of creation
ceases with publication;
once the thing is done,
modesty turns to exhibition;
even those who do not
confess as a profession
do it now not to expose themselves
but to allow others to see what there is.)
Translated by Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg