Sketch Of Contemporary Man Poem by Jorge Carrera Andrade

The world is covered with cradles
that sing in the night.

Man lives accumulating blocks of stone
for the houses of the future man.

Weighed down by climates,
making his way among towers, chimneys and antennae,
a traveler each day in his own city,
he is shipwrecked by five o'clock
among an electric vegetation of advertisements.

Master of machines,
he lives in skyscrapers.
You are in the North, South, East and West:
white man, yellow man, black man.

In his hands bloom
itineraries of boats and trains.
Nourished by newspapers
mornings are summed up in his eyes.

The railroad plows through the earth,
turning up shavings of landscapes;
piloted by the man with perfect hands
an airplane rises against the geography.

Man shouts
in Mexico and Berlin, in Moscow and Buenos Aires
as his telegrams cover the planet.

This is the landscape of our night:
the city girds on its belt of trains,
as searchlights extend their snail's antenna
and an airplane, a celestial shipwreck, descends.

Man, inventor of the future, arises
surrounded by machines,
posters of Lenin, street plans of New York
and panoramas of the world.