From Quincas Borba by Machado de Assis

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The sound of the voices and the vehicles woke up a beggar who was sleeping on the steps of the church. The poor devil sat up, saw what it was, then lay down again, but awake, on his back, his eyes fixed on the sky. The sky was staring back at him, as impassive as he, but without the beggar’s wrinkles or his worn shoes or his tatters, a clear, starry, calm, Olympian sky, like the one that presided over Jacob’s wedding and Lucretia’s suicide. They looked at each other in a kind of judgment game, with a certain air of rival and tranquil majesties, without haughtiness or wretchedness, as if the beggar were saying to the sky:
“Well, you won’t be falling on me.”
And the sky:
“And you won’t be climbing up me.”

Translation by Gregory Rabassa

 

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