Dom Casmurro 1.8 · 1.8

The wound lands, and its size is measured by 'tanto bastou' — that was enough. A few drooping eyelids were sufficient to stop the poet mid-line and make him 'mettesse os versos no bolso', tuck the verses back in his pocket. The gesture is beautifully observed: the pocketing of a poem is the pocketing of an offered self, withdrawn in a huff. Vanity, wounded, gathers up its treasure and hides it. Machado lets the whole comedy of the artistic ego play out in that one small motion — the poem carried like a valuable, produced with hope, and put away in silent reproach the instant its audience flags. The narrator, of course, notices all of it, and reports it with the faint amusement of a man watching a child sulk. But the poet is not done: the verses go into the pocket, and in their place, the next day, will come the two words that outlast the poem entirely.

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