I’ve spent some of my life living in Brazil. I first went there back in 1994, and it didn’t take long for me to discover the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
‘Drummond’, as he is known to Brazilians, lived from 1902 until 1987. And though he was a famously shy man who wrote poetry (rarely a bestseller), he is known, until today, right across Brazil.
In fact, there is a statue of Carlos Drummond de Andrade now…sitting by the Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, near to which he lived for many years.
Not much of Drummond’s writing has been translated into English. So, some while ago, I translated 18 of my favourite poems of his from Portuguese into English.
These translated poems got put to one side because I’ve been concentrating on writing books for young people. But I thought about one of them this afternoon. In Portuguese it is called O Elefante. You’ll find my English version below.
Drummond wrote in challenging ways, but he nearly always used language that is down to earth. And he wrote with a sense of humour. The poem below is from a brilliant, heart-warming, funny collection of poems called A Rosa do Povo, published in 1945.
THE ELEPHANT
I make an elephant
from the little that I have.
Bits of wood
salvaged from old furniture
should just hold him up.
Then I fill him with cotton,
cheap stuffing, sweetness.
Glue holds his
drooping ears in place.
His trunk rolls up.
It is the happiest part
of his architecture.
But that still leaves the tusks,
made from this pure material
I cannot figure out.
A precious stuff so white
that it is rolled in the circus dust
and still comes up clean, intact.
Then the last touch, the eyes,
where the most fluid
and permanent part
of the elephant is kept,
oblivious to the scam.
So here he is, my modest elephant
ready to go out
looking for friends
in a bored world
which no longer believes in animals,
which lives in suspicion of things.
There he goes, all majestic, fragile
weight, fanning himself
and slowly shifting
his sewn hide
on which there are cloth flowers
and clouds hinting at
a more poetic world
where love brings back together
the forms of nature.
My elephant walks off
down the busy street
but no one bothers to look.
They do not even laugh
at the tail threatening to
abandon the rest of the body.
He is all grace, in spite of
legs which get in the way
and a bulging belly
which might collapse
at the slightest push.
There is elegance in the way
he shows the scant life he has,
and not a soul
in this city allows itself
to take in the fugitive image
of his tender body,
clumsy-footed
but hungry and touching.
Hungry for heart-rending lives
and incidents,
for meetings by moonlight
in the deepest ocean,
under tree roots,
or in the hearts of shells,
for lights which won’t blind
but which shine through
the thickest tree trunks,
his walk, which takes him onward
without crushing the plants
on the battlefield,
in search of places,
secrets, happenings
untold in any book,
leaves a trail which
only the wind,
the leaves, the ants
recognize.
Men ignore it.
They only dare show themselves
in the peace behind curtains
eyelids closed.
And late at night
my elephant returns.
But he returns worn out.
His hesitant feet
fall to pieces in the dust.
He didn’t find
what he needed,
what we needed,
my elephant and I
in whom I love to disguise myself.
Weary of inquiry,
the whole contraption falls apart
as if it were nothing but paper.
The glue dissolves.
Everything inside him,
the forgiveness, the caresses,
the feathers, the cotton,
spill out over the carpet
like a dismantled myth.
Tomorrow I start again.
by Carlos Drummond de Andrade
translation Sean Taylor
