Foreign Word - Mário Chamie

Poet and critic of poetry, Mário Chamie was graduated in law from the University of São Paulo. He was Municipal Secretary of Culture and created the Pinacoteca Municipal de São Paulo, the Museum of the City of São Paulo and the Centro Cultural São Paulo. Mario Chamie is an important name in the history of avant-garde that emerged in the late 1950s. As dissident of the concrets, he established the "práxis-poetry" with his book Lavra-Lavra, from 1962. As the name suggests, the central idea was to build poems based on the practice of life. Mario Chamie, the leading poet and theorist of the group. The poems were the result of a practice survey of words within the semantic field of the chosen theme of the poem or book. In this context, I dared transcreate Chamie into English!

Two Italians, an Old Man and a Young Boy
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

The Fool and the Sage
Translated by Eduardo Miranda

The sage within you
do not know what knows
the fool which nobody sees through.

You know you do not see through
the fool who does not know
about the sage within you.

But the fool within you
does not know about the sage you see through.

O Tolo e o Sábio

O sábio que há em você
não sabe o que sabe
o tolo que não se vê.

Sabe que não se vê
o tolo que não sabe
o que há de sábio em você.

Mas do tolo que há em você
não sabe o sábio que você vê.