Murilo Mendes

The Bank Employee's Modinha

I'm as sad as a pharmacist's apprentice.
I'm almost as sad as a man with sideburns.
I spend all day dreaming of female attention,
but all I hear is clacking typewriters.

It's raining outside; Floriano's statue gets more lovely all the time.
So many girls, my whole life long!
And me lining up other people's fortunes on paper.
If I had all those thousands I'd set imagination's
wheel rolling down the world's ways.
And those clients doing
nothing with their thousands!
Hatching other thousands-and they'll do nothing with them, too.

If the Manager had my imagination
the Bank would disappear
and I'd be somewhere else.

 

[Trans. Chris Daniels]

 

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