translated by Mayre Buyuklieva

 

i saw a beggar who was drawing

and didn’t pretend to be selling the drawings

there was no pathetic pose

please buy my art be my saviors

or go to hell you bloody polite society

he was simply begging with his hat laid on the pavement

the poor devil

what can you do it happens

it might be me or some neighbor the next day

he didn’t drown himself in whining

whatever fell in the hat was good that’s all

who cares about pride

and for the time to pass on some piece of paper

he scribbled with a pencil just this and that

some faces i think or something else maybe

just like that like a dog that sniffs absent-mindedly

it might be that he was taking some notes

or he might have talked to someone

such things are rarely noticed

poverty is a terrible crime

it turns you into an animal the human crumbles away

becomes incapable of normal behavior

miserably shrunk

oppressed by the sun by the air

but this guy hats off for this guy

he was drawing there like a smart kid

left to its boredom somewhere

i believe that’s what good ol’ seneca

meant in his firmness of the wise

such unconscious gestures of personal freedom

are actually priceless and i think to myself

that the whole war with the devil

will be won by them altogether unknowingly at that