Álvaro de Campos

On The Last Page Of A New Anthology

So many good poets!
So many good poems!
They're really good and all alike,
With so much concurrency not one stays with you,
Or they endure by chance, posterity's lottery,
Gaining place by the Empresario's whim . . .
So many good poets!
What am I writing poems for?
When I write them they seem to me
What my sensation, with which I write them, seems to me-
The only big thing in the world-
The universe outside swells with my largess.
Afterwards, written, right there, readable . . .
Well, now . . . And in this anthology of minor poets?
So many good poets!
What is genius, finally; how does one distinguish
Genius from dexterity, good poets from bad?
I have no idea if you can really distinguish . . .
It's better to sleep . . .
I shut the anthology more weary of it than I am of the world . . .
Am I vulgar? . . .
So many good poets!
Holy God! . . .

(5/1/28)

[trans. Chris Daniels & Dana Stevens]

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