They are more delicate even than shrubs and they run

and run from one side to the other, always forgetting

something. Surely they lack I don't know what

basic ingredient, though they present themselves

as noble or serious, at times. Oh, terribly serious,

even tragic. Poor things, one would say that they hear

neither the song of the air nor the secrets of hay;

likewise they seem not to see what is visible

and common to each of us, in space. And they are sad,

and in the wake of sadness they come to cruelty.

All their expression lives in their eyes--and loses itself

to a simple lowering of lids, to a shadow.

And since there is little of the mountain about them --

nothing in the hair or in the terribly fragile limbs

but coldness and secrecy -- it is impossible for them

to settle themselves into forms that are calm, lasting

and necessary. They have, perhaps, a kind

of melancholy grace (one minute) and with this they allow

themselves to forget the problems and translucent

inner emptiness that make them so poor and so lacking

when it comes to uttering silly and painful sounds: desire, love, jealousy

(what do we know?) -- sounds that scatter and fall in the field

like troubled stones and burn the herbs and the water,

and after this it is hard to keep chewing away at our truth.

by Carlos Drummond de Andrade from In Praise of Fertile Land translated by Mark Strand

Painting by Frazn Marc