windows made of latticed yellow wire,
My present feelings—natural and discreet like gentlemen—
Are practical and free of hysteria, filling their lungs with
ocean air
Like people perfectly aware of how healthy it is to breathe
air from the sea.
The day is now definitely geared for working,
Everything begins to move, to get organized.
With great immediate and natural pleasure I follow with my
soul
All the commercial operations needed for a shipment of
goods.
My era is the rubber stamp appearing on all invoices,
And I feel that all letters from all offices
Should be addressed to me.
A bill of lading is so distinctive,
And a ship captain’s signature so handsome and modern!
The commercial formality at the beginning and end of letters:
Dear Sirs—Messieurs—Amigos e Senhores,
Yours faithfully—Nos salutations empressées . . .
All of this isn’t only human and tidy but also beautiful,
And it ultimately has a maritime destiny: a steamer on which
are loaded
The goods named in the letters and invoices.
Life’s complexity! Though drawn up by people
Who love, hate, have political passions and sometimes
commit crimes,
The invoices are so neat, so well written, so independent of
all that!
Some people look at an invoice and don’t feel this.
Surely you felt it, Cesário Verde.
And I feel it so humanly it makes me cry.
Don’t try to tell me there’s no poetry in business and in
offices!
It enters through every pore . . . I breathe it in this ocean air,
Because all of this concerns steamers and modern navigation,
Because invoices and business letters are the beginning of the
story,
And the ships carrying the goods across the eternal sea are
the end.
Ah, and the voyages—holiday voyages and other kinds . . .
Voyages on the sea, where we’re all companions
In a special way, as if a maritime mystery
Brought our souls together and transformed us for a moment
Into transient citizens of the same uncertain country,
Eternally moving over the vastness of the waters!
Grand hotels of the Infinite, O my transatlantic ships!
Totally and perfectly cosmopolitan, for you never stay long
in one place,
And you contain every sort of face, costume and race!
Voyages, voyagers—so many different kinds!
So many nationalities, professions and people in the world!
So many different directions one can take in life,
In this life which at heart is always, always the same life!
So many curious faces! All faces are curious,
And nothing makes for holiness like constantly looking at
people.
Brotherhood is not after all a revolutionary idea.
It’s something we learn in daily life, where everything has to
be tolerated.
And we begin to appreciate what we have to tolerate,
Until we nearly weep with affection for what we once
tolerated!
Ah, all this is beautiful, all this is human and linked
To human feelings, so sociable and bourgeois,
So complexly simple, so metaphysically sad!
The diversified, floating life ends up educating us in
humanity.
Poor humans! Poor humans all of us!
I take leave of this moment in the person of this other ship
Which is now setting sail. It’s an English tramp steamer,
Quite grungy, as if it were a French ship,
With the friendly air of a seaborne proletarian,
And no doubt mentioned on the back page of yesterday’s
papers.
My heart goes out to the poor steamer, so humble and
unaffected.
It seems to feel responsible for something, to be an honest
person,
Faithful to some duty or other.
There it goes, leaving its berth in front of where I’m sitting
on the wharf.
There it goes, placidly passing where sailing ships once
passed,
Long, long ago . . .
To Cardiff? Liverpool? London? It doesn’t matter.
It does its duty. As we should do ours. Marvelous life!
Bon voyage! Bon voyage!
Bon voyage, my poor chance friend who did me the favor
Of taking with you the sadness and delirium of my dreams,
Restoring me to life so I can watch you and see you sail
away.
Bon voyage! Bon voyage! That’s what life is . . .
With what natural elegance so typical of morning
You sail tall and straight from out of Lisbon’s harbor today!
I feel strangely endeared and grateful to you for this . . .
For this what? Who knows what! . . . Go on . . . Sail
away . . .
With a slight quiver
(Tch-tch- - tch- - - tch- - - - tch- - - - - tch . . . )
The flywheel in me comes to a halt.
Sail away, slow steamer, sail and don’t stay . . .
Sail away from me, sail out of my sight,
Depart from inside my heart,
Disappear into the Faraway, the Faraway, the mist of God,
Disappear, follow your destiny and leave me . . .
Who am I to weep for you and question you?
Who am I to speak to you and love you?
Who am I to be troubled by the sight of you?
It pushes off from the wharf, the sun rises golden, shines
brighter,
Glancing off the rooftops of the buildings on the wharf.
The whole of this side of the city is gleaming . . .
Depart, leave me, become
First the ship in mid-river, separate and distinct,
Then a small, black ship headed toward the bar,
Then a hazy point on the horizon (O anxiety!),
An ever hazier point on the horizon . . .
Then nothing, just me and my sadness,
And the great city now bathed in sunlight,
And the real, naked hour like a wharf without ships,
And the slow turning of the crane, like a turning compass,
Tracing a semicircle of I don’t know what emotion
In the staggered silence of my soul . . .
1915
SALUTATION TO WALT WHITMAN
Portugal, Infinity—June eleventh, nineteen hundred and
fifteen . . .
Hey-la-a-a-a-a-a-a!
From here in Portugal, with every historical age in my brain,
I salute you, Walt, I salute you, my Universal brother,
Forever modern and eternal, the singer of concrete
absolutes,
Passionate mistress of the scattered universe,
Great homosexual who rubs against the diversity of things,
Sexualized by stones, by trees, by people, by professions,
Full of lust for passing bodies, chance encounters, mere
observations,
Champion of the material substance of all things,
My glorious hero who goes into Death skipping,
Greeting God with shouts and roars and squeals!
Singer of fierce and tender brotherhood with all things,
Great democrat in all your pores, close in body and soul to
everything,
Carnival of all actions, bacchanalia of all intentions,
; Twin brother of all initiatives,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau of the world bound to produce
machines,
Homer of the elusive carnal flux,
Shakespeare of sensations that were beginning to run on
steam,
Milton-Shelley of Electricity on the horizon!
Incubus of all gestures,
Inner spasm of all outer objects,
Pimp of the whole Universe,
Slut of all solar systems, pansy of God!
I, with my monocle and exaggeratedly tight-waisted coat,
Am not unworthy of you, Walt, and you know it.
I’m not unworthy of you, for the simple reason that I salute
you . . .
I, so prone to inertia and so easily bored,
Am one of yours, you know I am, and I love and understand
you,
And although I never met you, being born around the year
you died,
I know you loved me too, you knew me, and it gladdens my
heart.
I know that you knew me, considered me and explained me,
And I know that that’s what I am, whether on the Brooklyn
Ferry ten years before I was born
Or on the Rua do Ouro today, thinking about everything
that’s not the Rua do Ouro,
And as you felt everything, I feel everything, we walk hand
in hand,
Hand in hand, Walt, hand in hand, dancing the universe in
our soul.
I kiss your picture all the time.
Wherever you are now (I don’t know where, but I know it’s
God)
You feel this, I know you feel it, and my kisses (in person)
are warmer,
Which is how you want them, and so you thank me from
where you are,
I’m sure of it, something tells me so—a satisfied feeling in
my spirit,
An indirect, abstract erection in the depths of my soul.
You were cyclopean and muscular, not pretty,
Yet your attitude toward the world was feminine,
And for you each leaf of grass, each stone and each man was
the Universe.
Here’s to you, dear old Walt, my great Comrade, evoe!
I belong to your Bacchic orgy of unbridled sensations,
I’m one of yours—from the feeling in my feet to the nausea
in my dreams.
I’m one of yours, look at me. From where you are, in God,
you see me in reverse,
From inside out . . . You divine my body; what you see is my
soul,
Seeing it directly, and through its eyes my body.
Look at me: you know that I, Álvaro de Campos, engineer,
Sensationist poet,
Am not your disciple, not your lover, and not your singer.
You know I’m You and are glad for it!
I can never read much of your poetry at once . . . It’s too full
of feeling . . .
I move through your verses as through a jostling crowd,
And they smell to me of sweat, of various oils, of human and
mechanical activity,
So that I finally don’t know if I’m reading or living,
I don’t know if my true place is in the world or in your
poetry,
I don’t know if I’m here, with both feet on the natural earth,
Or if I’m hanging upside down in some sort of emporium,
Dangling from the natural ceiling of your tumultuous
inspiration,
From the middle of the ceiling of your unattainable intensity.
Open all the doors!
I’m coming through!
My password? Walt Whitman!
But to hell with a password . . .
I’ll just come on through . . .
I’ll break down the doors if I have to . . .
Yes, I who am meek and civilized will break down the doors,
Because in this moment I’m not meek or civilized,
I’m ME, a thinking universe of flesh and blood that wants to
get through
And that will get through, for when I want to get through,
I’m God!
Get this rubbish out of my sight!
Stash these emotions into drawers!
Away with politicians, literati,
Smug businessmen, policemen, prostitutes, pimps!
All of this is the letter that kills, not the spirit that gives life.
The spirit that gives life in this moment is ME!
Let no son of a bitch cross my path!
My path is through infinity all the way to the end!
Whether or not I can reach the end is none of your business,
let me go,
It concerns only me, and God, and the meaning-that’s-me of
the word Infinite . . .
Forward!
I dig in the spurs!
And I feel the spurs, I’m the selfsame horse I ride,
Because I, through my will to be one with God,
Can be everything, or nothing, or anything,
Depending on my mood . . . It’s no one else’s business . . .
Raging delirium! I want to yelp, to leap,
To rant, rave, jump, twirl and shout with my body,
To cling to car wheels and get rolled over,
To lie beneath the twisting of the whip that’s going to
crack . . . . .
To be the she-dog of all he-dogs and still not be satisfied,
To be the flywheel of all machines and never go fast enough,
To be whatever’s crushed, abandoned, uprooted, destroyed,
And all for you, to sing and salute you . . . . .
Dance with me this delirium, Walt, in the world where you
are now,
Hop with me in this tribal dance that bumps into the stars,
Fall with me to the ground from exhaustion,
Dash with me into the walls until we’re dazed,
Shatter with me into smithereens . . . . .
In all, through all, around all, without all,
An abstract bodily rage stirring maelstroms in the soul . . .
Come on! Forward!
Even if God tries to stop us, let’s go forward . . . It doesn’t
matter . . .
Let’s go forward,
Forward, to no place at all . . .
Infinity! The Universe! Goal with no goal! What does it
matter?
Boom! boom! boom! boom! boom!
Right now, yes, let’s go, straight ahead, boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Hup-hup . . . hup-hup . . . hup-hup . . . hup-hup . . .
Like a hurled thunderbolt I rush
Toward you in leaps of the heart.
With military bands leading the way, I keep saluting you . . .
In a grand procession with frenzied shouting and jumping
I scream out your name at the top of my lungs,
And every cheer for me and for you and for God I give to
you,
And the universe spins around us like a carousel with music
inside our heads,
And I, with intrinsic lights in my anterior epidermis,
Mad from the drunken, musical hissing of machines,
And you, the renowned, the reckless, you (...)
And so it’s to you I address
My verses that are leaps, my verses that are jumps, my
spasm verses,
My hysterical-attack verses,
My verses that pull the carriage of my nerves.
Tripping and stumbling I get inspired,
I’m so excited I can hardly breathe or stand still,
And my verses are my not being able to burst from living.
Throw open all the windows!
Rip all
the doors off their hinges!
Pull the house down on top of me!
I want to live at large in the open air,
I want to have gestures outside my body,
I want to run like rain down the walls,
I want to be stepped on like the paving stones of roadways,
I want to sink like a dead weight to the bottom of the sea,
With a sensuality I lost ages ago!
I don’t want latches on the doors!
I don’t want locks on coffers!
I want to mix in, to merge, to be swept along,
I want to become someone else’s aching possession,
To be dumped out of garbage cans,
To be tossed into the sea,
To be sought out at home for obscene purposes—
Anything but to keep on sitting here quietly!
Anything but to keep on writing these verses!
I want a world without gaps!
I want objects to materially touch each other and
interpenetrate!
I want physical bodies to belong to each other like souls,
Not just dynamically but statically too!
I want to fly and to fall from high up!
To be hurled like a grenade!
To end up in X, to be taken to Y ...
Abstract apogee at the end of me and of everything!
Motorized iron climax!
Stairless staircase of speed climbing higher!
Hydraulic pump extracting my throbbing guts like an
anchor!
Put me in shackles just so that I can break them!
So that I can break them with my teeth and make my teeth
bleed!
O masochistic, blood-spurting joy of life!
The sailors took me prisoner.
Their hands squeezed me in the darkness,
And I died for a moment when I felt this.
Then my soul licked the floor of my private jail
To the shrill buzzing of impossibilities surrounding my ire.
Leap, jump, bite down on the bit,
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe Page 15