Manuel Bandeira was a Brazilian poet who was born in 1886 and he passed away on a day like today of 1968 in Rio de Janeiro. To remember him and for those who did not know him, here is a selection of poems chosen from his work.
Manuel Bandeira
Manuel Carneiro de Souza Bandeira Filho was born in Recife and being young goes to Rio de Janeiro. He then left for Sao Paulo where he enrolled in the polytechnic school. The tuberculosis suffering forced him to drop out of school and return to Rio. He was greatly affected by losses, in just four years, from his mother, his father and his sister, at the same time that he himself was fighting against his own death. All those misfortunes influenced his work as well as his life, which was very lonely, despite the fact that he did not lack friends and he was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters which he entered in 1940. His main works are at five hours, Carnival y Licentiousness.
Chosen poems
Desnudo
when you're dressed,
no one imagines
The worlds you hide
under your clothes
(So, as in the day,
we have no notion
Of the stars that shine
In the deep sky.
But the night undresses,
And, naked in the night,
your worlds throb
And the worlds of the night.
your knees shine
shine your navel
shine all your
Abdominal lyre.
Your meager breasts.
-Like two small fruits
in the stiff
Of the robust trunk-
They shine.) Ah, your breasts!
Your hard nipples!
your torso! your flanks!
Oh your shoulders!
With nudity, your eyes
they also undress;
Your look is more diffuse,
Slower, more liquid.
So, in them,
float, swim, jump,
I dive
perpendicular!
Down to the bottom
of your being, wherever
Your soul smiles at me
Naked, naked, naked.
the last poem
«This is how I would like my last poem.
That he was tender saying the simplest things
and less intentional
that was burning like a sob without tears,
that had the beauty of flowers almost without perfume,
the purity of the flame in which they are consumed
the clearest diamonds,
the passion of suicides who kill themselves without explanation.
Morning Star
I want the morning star
where is the morning star?
my friends my enemies
look for the morning star
she disappeared she was naked
Disappeared with whom?
look everywhere
Say I'm a man without pride
A man who accepts everything
I do not care?
I want the morning star
three days and three nights
I was murderer and suicide
thief, forger, indecent
Badly sexed virgin
Trigger of the afflicted
two headed giraffe
Sin for all sin with all
Sin with the rascals
Sin with the sergeants
Sin with the naval riflemen
sin anyway
With the Greeks and with the Trojans
With the father and the sacristan
With the leper of Pouso Alto
later with me
I will wait for you with kermeses novenas riders
I will eat dirt and say things at once
cuteness so simple
that you will faint
look everywhere
Pure or degraded to the last baseness
I love the morning star.
Poetics
I'm sick of understated lyricism
Of well-disciplined lyricism
Of the lyricism public official with reprimand book file protocol and expressions of appreciation
to Mr. Director.
I'm tired of the lyricism that stops and goes to find out the stamp in the dictionary
vernacular of a word.
down with the purists
All the words above all the universal barbarisms
All constructs above all exception syntaxes
All the rhythms especially the innumerable ones.
I'm sick of lyricism in love
Political
Rickety
Syphilitic
Of all lyricism that capitulates to what he wants to be outside of himself.
The rest is not lyricism
It will be accounting table of cosines secretary of the exemplary lover with a hundred models of letters and the
different ways to please women, etc.
I want before the lyricism of the crazy
The lyricism of drunks
The difficult and poignant lyricism of drunks
The lyricism of Shakespeare's clowns.
– I don't want to know more about lyricism that is not liberation.
Sources: Poemas del Alma and EPDLP.