Letters to a young poet

Literary Review, Summer, 1995 by Dalton Trevisan, Alexis Levitin

"Fleur-de-lis, if I'm not mistaken?"

She had asked for an interview and, in my sweetest voice, I had agreed to read her poems.

"You can't imagine, sir, how moved I am."

"Don't call me sir."

Nestled in the shadows, a red cardigan over her shoulders. Between the sweet vermouth and the whiskey, the voluminous notebook of poetry, a florid sticker on the cover.

"What I wouldn't give to be a poet."

Anything to be talented: ugly little thing, with neither charm nor ability, age uncertain.

"You remind me of a wren with a broken wing."

A felicitous image; she did not applaud.

"I don't know why I'm trembling . . ."

She lifted towards her pallid smile a cigarette, which I hastened to light: a thin, yellow finger, its nail gnawed to the quick.

"A literary lion, my flower? I've only written two successful sonnets."

"I know your poems by heart."

I didn't thank her, poor me, the famous minor poet who dazzles fat ladies, merry widows, ugly girls.

"Let's see your poems."

I held out my hand for the notebook, which she was protecting. In the confusion, the sweater slipped from her shoulder. . . . Oh, no! The left sleeve empty, fastened with a golden safety pin.

I took two long swigs. She rearranged the sweater:

"You needn't feel sorry for me."

"Forgive the commend about the wren."

"It was an accident. Just a pair of scissors. A little cut in my finger that went bad. Gangrene worked its way up."

Another vermouth for her, another whiskey for me.

"I'm a good typist. With just one hand."

"Turn your suffering into a poem."

"What a beautiful thought!"

"Good old Goethe."

"Now you know why I'm nervous. You were expecting a pretty girl. Look at me: ugly, miserable. Maimed."

She wasn't that ugly or that miserable. Less important than - to me, of course, it made no difference.

"I'm resigned to it. Look at me with pity, contempt, even disgust."

In the darkness, a bunch of black grapes; a bat asleep on a branch.

"Great poetry springs from suffering, isn't that Rilke's lesson?"

She lit one cigarette from another. She gulped down her vermouth. She gnawed at the remaining sliver of nail. She stared at me from deep within her glasses:

"Are you brave enough to make love to a cripple?"

Aren't we all maimed, some in the body, others in the soul? The pompous maker of phrases, cursed idol of the one-armed poetess. Three more whiskeys, three more vermouths, good old Rilke, an entire sonnet by Camoes. But I didn't open the notebook with the florid cover.

Standing up, helping her, with a shiver, to cover her wren's wing, could I have imagined that half an hour later, sobbing on my breast, she would be jabbing me with the stump of her arm, between famished kisses, in the ecstasy of passion?

Translated by Alexis Levitin

Dalton Trevisan, born in Curitiba in 1925, has published some four hundred short stories in about twenty collections since his literary debut in 1959, making him one of Brazil's most prolific writers of short fiction. His stories have been widely translated, individually and in book form. His publications in English include The Vampire of Curitiba and Other Stories (Knopf, 1972), translated by Gregory Rabassa.