Em entrelinhas
Tem furos na consciência, este rapaz. Tem a memória em cacos. Que fará da minha infância quando entrar no rasgão com que deu a todo o comprimento dela? Que sabe ele do labirinto onde uma letra se extravia ou do horizonte em que pressinto um sublinhado? Ignoro o que ele fará, bem como o que dirá ao ver num poema o céu em entrelinhas.
Between the Lines
He has furrows in his conscience, this kid. His memory is broken shards. What will he do with my childhood when he enters into the gash that runs along its entire length? What does he know about the labyrinth where a letter loses itself or of the horizon where I sense something taking shape? I don’t know what he’ll do, or what he’ll say, finding in a poem the sky between the lines.
Na pele
O mar, venho ver-lhe a pele a rebentar
ao longo das falésias, o que sempre
me traz a exaltação desses rapazes que circulam
por Lisboa no verão.
O mar está-lhes na pele. Partilho
com eles os quartos das pensões, sentindo as ondas
a avançar entre os lençóis. Perco-me à vista
da pedra onde o mar vem largar a pele.
In Their Skin
The sea, I come to watch its flesh breaking
all along the cliffs, which always
brings to me the exaltation of those boys that wander
Lisbon in the summertime.
The sea is in their skin. I share
with them my rented room, feeling the waves
mounting between the sheets. I am lost within sight
of the rock where the sea comes to shed its skin.
Como alguém disse
Não é que eu seja sábio, como entre as de mármore alguém disse
ser sempre uma coluna de madeira,
mas creio já ter visto um livro brilhar como
se fosse o mar quem nele ao rebentar depositasse o texto.
As Someone Once Said
It’s not that I am wise, like someone who once said, amid marble columns,
that he himself would always be of wood,
but I believe I’ve seen a book glistening as
if it were the sea laying down with pounding surf its text.
Olhando o sol
Um dia, olhando o sol, deu conta de que nele tinha os ossos mergulhados. Era no entanto impensável proceder a escavações no sol, embora tarde ou cedo a gente acabe por sentir no coração as escavadoras. Dir-se-ia um sol magnético, capaz de decidir dos resultados das mais árduas partidas de xadrez. Como se fosse uma das peças, dir-se-ia, ou como se a luz dele recuperasse através deste uma etimologia insuspeitada.
Há quem em si se embrenhe até lhe dar o coração pela cintura — começou ele a escrever então. Como se a espinha do próprio acto de escrever ficasse à mostra, a mão foi-lhe emergindo aos poucos do papel.
Gazing at the Sun
One day, gazing at the sun, he became aware that his bones were buried deep. It was, however, unthinkable to proceed with excavations on the sun, although sooner or later one ends up feeling the excavators in one’s heart. One could call it a magnetic sun, able to determine the results of the most arduous games of chess. As if it were one of the pieces, one might say, or as if its light were to regain an unsuspected etymology through chess.
There are those ensconced so thoroughly within they find themselves waist deep in their own heart— he then began to write. As if the backbone of the very act of writing were growing visible, his hand began emerging bit by bit from the sheet of paper.
Teatro
Na selva dos meus órgãos, sobre a qual foi desde sempre a pele o firmamento, ao coração coube o papel de rei da criação.
Ignoro de que peça é todo este meu corpo a encenação perversa, onde se vê o sangue rebentar contra os rochedos.
Do inferno, aonde às vezes o sol vai buscar as chamas, sobre ele impiedosamente jorram os projectores.
Theater
In the wilderness of my organs, over which from the beginning my skin served as firmament, the role of king of creation belongs to the heart.
I don’t know for which play my entire body is a perverse performance, in which one sees blood pounding on the rocks.
From hell, where the sun sometimes goes in search of flames, spotlights mercilessly spurt upon my body.
Alexis Levitin has published forty-seven books in translation, mostly poetry from Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. In addition to five books by Salgado Maranhão, his work includes Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm, Eugénio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words (both from New Directions), and Astrid Cabral’s Cage. He has served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the Universities of Oporto and Coimbra, Portugal, The Catholic University in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Brazil and has held translation residencies at the Banff Center, Canada, The European Translators Collegium in Straelen, Germany (twice), and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.
Ricardo Vasconcelos is a Professor of Portuguese at San Diego State University. He is the editor of Luís Miguel Nava’s Poesia ( Assírio & Alvim, 2020), and the author of the critical volume Campo de Relâmpagos — Leituras do Excesso na Poesia de Luís Miguel Nava, among other studies.