One of the influential Brazilians of the 20th century Ferreira Gullar (b. 10 Sep 1930 - d. 4 Dec 2016) was a poet and Essayist. The young Gullar was a poetry reader of the best Brazilians and the foreign poets.
From Dirty Poem Translated by Leland Guyer
Oh, my dirty city you suffer deeply and in silence from the shame the family smothers in its deepest drawers of faded dresses of tattered shirts of legions of degraded people barely eating yet embroidering flowers on their tablecloths on their table centerpieces with water jars
However, from his schooling days Ferreira had an interest in poetry. As well as, he also wrote few of them, but he could not see any future in his small village. The real life started for him when he flew to the second most popular city, Rio de Janeiro in 1950 and started working as a journalist.
Another poem written by Gullar was “There are Many Traps in The world”. There are many traps, some gets caught in social shame, or others in religious or political, drugs etc. However, the poet grabbed the reader’s attention on refuge at the beginning.
Art exists because life is not enough
Ferreira Gullar
Ferreira gave the best comparison of the human being to morning foam on the beach. As well as, it all ends with the biggest battle of life like betrayal, jail or hang. Gullar also said that life is crazy that often ends and vanishes like a Bomb.
Furthermore, he did not forget about generations of a kid’s fearless entry on this earth. And, seeking the unending answers of every question and convergence. The poet taught us that we should endure such traps until our death. The hard truth about life that is humans are prisoners and throughout their life. However, man should not give up in the middle of the life.
Poem: “There are Many Traps in The World” by Ferreira Gullar
There are many traps in the world and what is a trap could be a refuge and what is a refuge could be a trap Your window, for instance, opens to the sky and a star tells you that man is nothing or the morning foaming on the beach batters it, before Cabral, before Troy (four centuries ago Tomás Bequimão took the city, created a popular militia and then was betrayed, jailed, hanged) There are many traps in the world and many mouths telling you that life is short-lived that life is crazy And why not the Bomb? They ask you. Why not the Bomb to end it all, since life is crazy? Yet, you look at your son, the little kid who doesn’t know who fearlessly enters life and wants life and seeks the sun, the ball, fascinated, sees the aeroplane and questions and questions Life is short-lived life is crazy but there’s nothing but life And you couldn’t kill yourself, that’s the truth. You’re a prisoner of life as if in a cage. We’re all prisoners in this cage that Gagarin was the first to see from above, and to tell us: It’s blue. And we already knew it, so well that you couldn’t kill yourself and wouldn’t kill yourself and will endure until the end. It’s certain that in this cage there are those who have and those who have not there are those who have so much that they alone could feed the whole city and those who haven’t enough for today’s lunch The star is a liar the sea is a sophist. In fact, man is tied to life and needs to live man has hunger and needs to eat man has children and needs to provide for them There are many traps in the world and it’s necessary to shatter them.
In Gullar’s long explained poem defines the human traps also, read Joseph Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” on colonial control. The soul-scrubbing poem by Saint Tukaram Maharaj is also worth reading today.
