PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPOSITION (VII)

It’s mineral the paper

on which to write

verse; verse

that is possible not to make.

Mineral are

flowers and plants,

fruits, animals

when in a state of words.

Mineral

the horizon line,

our names, those things

made of words.

Mineral, at last,

any book:

’cause the written

word is mineral, the cold nature

of the written word.

João Cabral de Melo Neto (1950)

translated with Horacio Costa and Régis Bonvicino,

after Djelal Kadir