Flowers and ugly poems

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Hu Xudong's translation

Imprisoned by my class and clothes,

I walked in the gray street in white.

depression and commodities spy on me.

should I keep walking until I feel sick?

can I resist with my bare hands?

Dirty eyes in the clock on the bell tower:

No, the time of complete justice has not come.

Time is still feces, rotten poems, madness and procrastination.

Poor time, poor poet

stuck in the same deadlock.

I tried in vain to explain to myself that the wall is deaf.

under the skin of words, there are codes and codes.

The sun soothes the sick, but it doesn't make them well.

things. How sad those inconspicuous things are.

vomit this boredom along the city.

for forty years, no problem

has been solved or even put on the agenda.

Everyone goes home

They are not very free, but they can pick up the newspaper

and spell out the world. They know they have lost it.

how can you forgive the crimes on the earth?

I participated in many of them, and others I did very quietly.

some of them are beautiful, which makes them published.

soft crimes help people live.

mistakes are like daily rations, which are distributed at home.

A cruel baker who bakes evil.

a cruel milkman carrying evil.

set all this on fire, including me,

and give it to a boy in 1918.

however, my hatred is the best thing in me.

with it, I can save myself.