Melted in the Crucible

No, not one of Pound's imagist poems... This is Mário Quintana in his sophisticated simplicity: WAR Planes shot down; crosses falling from the sky. What real poetry is like: ON PAGINATION Poetry books should have wide margins, several blank pages and enough blanks on each printed page so that children may fill them in with cats, men, planes, houses, chimneys, trees, moons, bridges, cars, dogs, horses, oxen, plaits and stars which will themselves become part of the poems. Life according to the poet: RHYTHM The door the housewife moves and sweeps it clean sweeps it clean sweeps it clean The basin the young girl cleans her teeth cleans her teeth cleans her teeth The brook the washerwoman beats her clothes beats her clothes beats her clothes until at last                   the world goes round                                             ...

A translation of one more poem by the great Mário Quintana. THE FINAL POEM All through my extreme unction I was abstracted... Ah, this hopeless obsession with thinking about something else!  Incidentally, everything is always something else - the secret of poetry. As the priest's voice came sounding like a beetle, I was thinking of my first shoes treading and treading, to this day,  the paths of this world.