Author: Pablo Murad
Versions: Original Portuguese and English translation

Original Portuguese

O cigarro esconde

Gosto de fumar
porque há um instante
em que o corpo desaparece sem cair.

A brasa pequena,
acesa entre os dedos,
parece entender aquilo
que eu mesmo não sabia nomear.

Houve um tempo
em que eu desci demais dentro de mim.
Lá embaixo não havia resposta,
só parede, silêncio,
e uma espécie de noite
aprendendo meu rosto.

Então eu acendia.

Tragava devagar
como quem puxa para dentro
um pouco de coragem falsa,
um intervalo,
uma desculpa respirável.

A fumaça não me salvava.
Nunca salvou.
Não limpava o chão,
não abria portas,
não devolvia sentido ao que já tinha se perdido.

Mas cobria.

E, às vezes,
cobrir era tudo o que eu conseguia pedir.

Mentol, baunilha, chocolate:
nomes doces para uma coisa amarga.
O cigarro puro não tenta parecer bom.
Não se enfeita.
Não pede perdão.
Só queima,
e nisso talvez seja mais honesto
do que muita gente.

Uns gostam.
Outros condenam.
Eu não estava fazendo filosofia:
eu procurava um abrigo mínimo
entre a mão e o mundo.

Naquele tempo sem mapa,
sem fé suficiente,
sem motivo que ficasse de pé pela manhã,
o cigarro foi vício,
foi sombra,
foi erro repetido.

Mas também foi
o pequeno ritual
com que eu adiava o fim
e chamava isso de continuar.

English Version

The Cigarette Hides

I like to smoke
because there is an instant
when the body disappears without falling.

The small ember,
lit between my fingers,
seems to understand
what I myself could never name.

There was a time
when I went too far down inside myself.
Down there, there was no answer,
only walls, silence,
and a kind of night
learning the shape of my face.

So I would light one.

I would inhale slowly,
as if pulling inward
some counterfeit courage,
an interval,
a breathable excuse.

The smoke did not save me.
It never did.
It did not clean the floor,
did not open doors,
did not return meaning
to what had already been lost.

But it covered.

And sometimes,
to be covered
was all I knew how to ask for.

Menthol, vanilla, chocolate:
sweet names for something bitter.
A pure cigarette does not try to seem good.
It does not dress itself up.
It does not ask forgiveness.
It only burns,
and in that, perhaps,
it is more honest than many people.

Some enjoy it.
Others condemn it.
I was not making philosophy:
I was looking for a minimum shelter
between my hand and the world.

In that time without a map,
without enough faith,
without a reason
that could stand upright in the morning,
the cigarette was addiction,
was shadow,
was a repeated mistake.

But it was also
the small ritual
by which I postponed the end
and called it continuing.

Critical Note

This poem is built around a difficult contradiction: the cigarette is not treated as salvation, but it is also not reduced to mere weakness. It becomes a small object standing between collapse and continuation. That is the strongest part of the poem. It refuses the cheap moral conclusion. It does not say, “smoking saved me,” because that would be false. It also does not say, “smoking meant nothing,” because that would be emotionally dishonest.

The structure is deliberately spare. The poem works through short lines, controlled pauses, and repeated gestures: lighting, inhaling, covering, continuing. Instead of obvious rhyme, it depends on internal resonance. Words echo each other through meaning rather than sound. “Smoke,” “night,” “shadow,” “covered,” and “shelter” belong to the same emotional field. This gives the poem unity without making it feel decorated.

I had difficulty putting it into English while keeping the same structure. Portuguese carries a natural softness in phrases like “uma espécie de noite” and “entre a mão e o mundo.” English is harder, more exposed, less forgiving. The challenge was to preserve the intimacy without making the translation sound theatrical. The English version therefore chooses clarity over ornament. It keeps the bones of the original: the descent, the ritual, the failure of salvation, and the final admission that survival sometimes arrives in compromised forms.

I am proud of the poem because it does not lie about pain. It does not romanticize addiction, but it also understands why people hold on to destructive rituals when they have no better language for suffering. The line “The smoke did not save me. / It never did.” is essential because it prevents the poem from becoming sentimental. The final movement, however, admits the harder truth: even a mistake can become a temporary architecture for staying alive.

There is something here that recalls Fernando Pessoa in the inward fracture of the speaker, especially in the sense of watching oneself from a distance. There is also a trace of Carlos Drummond de Andrade in the plainness of the confession: the poem does not shout, it observes. Its rougher honesty touches the territory of Charles Bukowski, but without the swagger or self-mythology. And in its insistence on small rituals against inner ruin, it brushes against the spiritual exhaustion found in T. S. Eliot, though in a more intimate and domestic register.

The poem’s power is not in saying something new about cigarettes. Its power is in using the cigarette as evidence. Evidence of a period when the speaker had no map, no faith strong enough, and no reason that could stand upright in the morning. The cigarette is only the visible object. The true subject is endurance: compromised, embarrassed, imperfect endurance.

That is why the ending works. It does not offer redemption. It offers precision. The speaker did not conquer the darkness. He postponed the end and called it continuing. That is bleak, yes, but it is also exact. And sometimes exactness is the most beautiful form of mercy a poem can give.