Knowing I have always wanted to see two very different places in this world, France and Brazil, has always meant I would have to make a choice. I cannot be a vagabond, after all, roaming about of my own free will while pretending I have no one else in this world to whom I answer. In the end, poetry did the choosing. It seems fitting I focus on one of the many reasons for my choice, as mentioned in my first post, the Brazilian Poet Cabrel de Melo Neeto.
João Cabrel de Melo Neeto was a diplomat, the 37th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (don’t get too excited Supernatural fans, I originally read it as Men of Letters, too), and his was a voice of pragmatism. He is quoted as saying, “I try not to perfume the flower,” and as evidenced by his poetry, he succeeded. His poems are proof poetry need not be a constant barrage of human emotion, even when touching upon a subject deeply. In some ways, his work reminds me of haiku, not in form, but in the vivid pictures he painted.
“The End of the World”
At the end of a melancholy world
men read the newspapers.
Indifferent men eating oranges
that flame like the sun.
They gave me an apple to remind me
of death. I know that cities telegraph
asking for kerosene. The veil I saw flying
fell in the desert.
No one will write the final poem
about this private twelve o’clock world.
Instead of the last judgment, what worries me
is the final dream.
In three verses Cabrel de Melo Neeto takes on history, the state of human beings during his present, and what is coming down the pipeline. His worries are valid today. In this world, many suffer while others continue on indifferently, and I have no answers for those problems other than to say I can do small things to help one person here or one there. The veil, for me, is a death shroud covering this world. It hasn’t quite dropped over us, but this is because there are bright spots in our world. There are people who get up daily and decide they will make a difference to someone, sometimes many someones. I will say I find the last verse most relatable. If we are all gone, there will be no more poems, no more music, no stories, no one left to empathize. What will our final dreams be like? Filled with fear? Running on fumes? Or will we hold out hope to one another?
It it strange a poem about the world’s end would light a lamp on a journey forward, but life is funny sometimes.
*Frank Herbert wrote in Dune “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”
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