In a Modern Neighborhood

For Manuel Ribeiro

 

Ten o’clock in the morning; thin curtains

Shade the palatial retreat;

The fountains run dry in the gardens,

And eyes are wounded with heat that whitens

Everything on the wide paved street.

 

Rez-de-chaussée rest in quietude,

On some the shutters are swung open

And in some of the rooms, stuccoed,

Or midst branches of a papered abode,

A table set with china will glisten.

 

How healthy to have one’s own apartment,

And an easy life! I was, unhurriedly,

Going to my place of employment,

Where these days I arrive with recurrent

Dizzy spells in a state of apoplexy.

 

From behind I noticed a girl on her way,

Hurrying, tattered and miniature,

Going up a checkered marble stairway

With her basket; she knelt there to lay

What seemed a whole garden plot beside her.

 

And, in spite of the sun, I couldn’t stop staring:

She gets up; her clogs clattering;

Exposing the blue cotton of her stocking,

And when she bends over, disheveled, plain-looking,

Little white arms hang pendant and flopping.

 

From the landing above a manservant taunts:

“If it suits you, hurry up; shut your slot.

That’s all you’ll get.” And, nonchalant,

He tosses a coin, tarnished and gaunt,

That bounces off an apricot.

 

Suddenly—what an artist’s vision!—

What if I transformed those ordinary vegetables,

With the light of that intense colorist, the sun,

Into a human being, living, always in motion,

with beautifully-proportioned muscles?!

 

Scents waft, there’s smoke from a kitchen fire;

Under shouldered hampers, bakers climb

slumping up the stairs, white with flour;

Doorbells ring at this or that door,

Frenetically, but not all the time.

 

I recompose, anatomically,

A new organic body, by rule of thumb.

I pick out colors, find forms. Then I see

A head—in a watermelon—watching me,

In some cabbages I descry a flushed bosom.

 

The olives, which give us olive oil,

Black and bundled between green flounces:

Are braids of hair drawn up in a coil,

Turnips—bones the color milk on the boil,

And bunches of grapes—the eye’s irises.

 

Necks, shoulders, mouths, a countenance,

Turn up in fruits, each in their own position.

The tumid greens give off a fragrance,

And—looking like the belly of a dunce

Who dines on it all—a ripened melon.

 

And then, like a fetus dilating,

I saw in the vegetables meats that tempted,

In the scarlet cherries, blood was flowing,

In the tomatoes, excellent hearts beating,

and in the carrots, fingers red and rigid.

 

The sun gilded the sky. The peddler,

Having sold all her fresh lettuce,

The sprig of mint that scented the air

Given away, turned to me with joyful clamor:

“No one else is coming!… Can you help us?!…”

 

I went up to her, my disdain gone by now.

The handles nearly broke in our hands.

We hoisted the whole of that weight somehow—

As it seemed to stick to the marble stairwell—

With all the force in our muscular glands.

 

“God bless!” “Accept my endless gratitude!”

I experienced, from that salutation,

The strength, the joy, and the plenitude

That spring from a surfeit of rectitude,

Or from some unknow form of digestion.

 

And as I moved off to the other side,

Carriages yonder rolled past in concert,

The poor thing took her leave through the tide

Of August heat, her cheekbones were pied,

And she was hipless beneath her floral-patterned skirt.

 

A little whippersnapper waters the creeper

From a blue window; and with the sprinkler

Of the watering can, he seems a winnower,

Or a sprinkler of stars, and the fine powder

That rises up in white clouds anoints the youngster.

 

From the basket comes a salubrious wafting,

I hear a canary—what artless trills!

Households behind the lattices are stirring,

Flowing up the façades the sun is rising

Distilling orange rays along the windowsills.

 

She’s picturesque and audacious in her apron,

Her breasts insisting, her hands on her hips,

A happy disaster that piques my emotion.

Slender and rickety, she hawks her buxom

Cabbages, as though she had no hardships.

 

And like the thick legs of a giant,

Athletic and whole, however trunkless,

Carried atop the head of the poor itinerant,

On their bed of greens—rustic and abundant—

Two sober and meaty pumpkin squashes.

 

Translated by Martin Earl for