Manuel Carneiro de Sousa Bandeira Filho (April 19, 1886 – October 13, 1968) was a Brazilian poet, literary critic, and translator, who wrote over 20 books of poetry and prose.

In 1922, after an extended stay in Europe where Bandeira met many prominent authors and painters, he contributed poems of political and social criticism to the Modernist movement in São Paulo.

His work addresses universal themes and everyday concerns, sometimes with an approach of "poem-a-joke", dealing with forms and inspiration that academic tradition considers vulgar.

His poetry, far from being a little sweet song of melancholy, is deeply concerned with a drama combining his personal history and conflicts stylistic lived by the poets of his time.

Cinza das Horas—Ash from the Hours presents a great view: the hurt, the sadness, resentment, framed by the morbid style of late symbolism.

[4] Carnaval, a book that came soon after Cinza das Horas opens with the unpredictable: the evocation of the Bacchic and satanic carnival, but it ends in the middle of melancholy.

Instead, happiness appears in poems like "Vou-me Embora para Pasárgada" [I'm off to Pasargadae],[5]" where the question is dreamy evocation of an imaginary country, the Pays de Cocagne, where every desire, especially erotic, is satisfied.

Adopting the trope of the Portuguese saudade, Pasargada and many other poems are similar in a nostalgic remembrance of Bandeira's childhood, street life, as well as the everyday world of provincial Brazilian cities of the early 20th century.

Quando a Indesejada das gentes chegar (Não sei se dura ou caroável), Talvez eu tenha medo.