the coffee-mill

the coffee-mill shows up in various
cubist paintings, along with the bottle, the
newspaper and the pipe, all in
browns and grays, reality

in its vital edges, the somber
presence of reduced
hallucinations. the coffee-mill
turned everything into a finely ground

powder that clogged the most intimate mechanisms,
those of passion and grief, as well as the linear
calligraphies of fragmented profiles and cobalt-blue birds.
next the coffee-mill ground up representation,

which became unintelligible and gave
way to a music of spirals
with less spin, to a memory
less sharply defined, to contours

less indebted to cézanne, to a life
less still – yes, perhaps to a life
that was ready for the disorder
of another nature, another kind of life.

the coffee-mill became a barrel-organ.
the world speeded up,
people’s lives became less linear,
and the clear waters turned cloudy.

o moinho de café

o moinho de café

o moinho de café figura nalguns
quadros dos cubistas, com o jornal, a
garrafa, o cachimbo, tudo em
castanhos e cinzentos. é

a realidade nas suas arestas vivas, a sombria
presença das reduzidas
alucinações: o moinho
de café transformava tudo em fino pó

moído que encravava as engrenagens mais íntimas,
as da paixão e do lamento, ou as caligrafias
lineares de meios perfis e aves azul-cobalto.
mais tarde o moinho de café moeu a representação

que se tornou irreconhecível e deu
lugar a uma música de espirais
menos rotativas, a uma memória
menos angulosa, a uma periferia

menos grata a cézanne, a uma natureza
menos morta, talvez seja isso, a uma
natureza pronta para a desordem
de uma outra virtualidade ou natureza.

o moinho de café tornou-se um realejo.
o mundo acelerou-se,
as vidas ficaram menos lineares
e as águas de cristal ficaram pardas.