Peregrino e Hóspede Sobre a Terra
Meu único país é sempre onde estou bem
é onde pago o bem com sofrimento
é onde num momento tudo tenho
O meu país agora são os mesmos campos verdes
que no outono vi tristes e desolados
e onde nem me pedem passaporte
pois neles nasci e morro a cada instante
que a paz não é palavra para mim
O malmequer a erva o pessegueiro em flor
asseguram o mínimo de dor indispensável
a quem na felicidade que tivesse
veria uma reforma e um insulto
A vida recomeça e o sol brilha
a tudo isto chamam primavera
mas nada disto cabe numa só palavra
abstracta quando tudo é tão concreto e vário
O meu país são todos os amigos
que conquisto e perco a cada instante
Os meus amigos são os mais recentes
os dos demais países os que mal conheço e
tenho de abandonar porque me vou embora
pois eu nunca estou bem aonde estou
nem mesmo estou sequer aonde estou
Eu não sou muito grande nasci numa aldeia
mas o país que tinha já de si pequeno
fizeram-no pequeno para mim
os donos das pessoas e das terras
os vendilhões das almas no templo do mundo
Sou donde estou e só sou português
por ter em portugal olhado a luz pela primeira vez
Pilgrim and Guest Upon the Earth
My only home is where I always feel good
is where I pay for that good with suffering
Is where at a single moment I have it all
My homeland now is the same green fields
I see sad and desolate in the fall
and where they don’t even ask for my passport
for in them I was born and die whenever
peace is not a word for me
The marigold the grass the peach tree blossoming
guarantee the minimum of pain needed
by someone who in the happiness he might have
would see retreat retirement and insult
Life begins again and the sun shines
all this they call spring
but none of this fits into a single abstract
word when everything is so concrete and varied
My home is all the friends
I’ve won and whom I lose each moment
My friends are the most recent ones
those from many countries those I scarcely know and
must give up because I’m leaving
for I am never well wherever I am
In fact I am not even where I am
I am not very big was born in a village
but the home that was mine small even then
they’ve made it even smaller now for me
the owners of people and of lands
the vendors of souls in the temple of the world
I stand where I am and I am only Portuguese
for having first seen light in Portugal
Inverno e Verão
Tu trazes até mim a tua longa mão
estende-la como uma ponte entre nós dois inverno e verão
garantes que ela tem por trás o coração
e no entanto só te chamo irmão
Cada um de nós é como antes uma solidão
e nada significa a nossa saudação
Summer and Fall
Your long hand reaches toward me like a call,
a bridge between us, summer and late, chill fall,
you guarantee there lies behind the other
another heart and so I call you brother
Yet each of us remains alone behind a wall
and our greeting means nothing at all
Serão tristes as oliveiras?
Aquela senhora que conheci no comboio, olhando pela janela, disse-me a certa altura que a oliveira é uma árvore triste. Olhei também e estive quase a concordar. Agora felicito-me, porque não foi preciso. Lembro-me que a senhora ia vestida de preto. Talvez lhe tivesse morrido alguém. As oliverias daquele olival que passava lá fora é que eu tenho a cereteza de que não faltava nada: nem sol, nem uma leve brisa, nem um fruto grado, prometedor. E perguntei para mim, ao descer do comboio:
–Porque maltratamos as oliveiras?
Are Olive Trees Sad?
That woman I met on the train, gazing out the window, at a certain moment said to me that the olive tree is a sad tree. I looked out and was about to agree. Now I congratulate myself, for it wasn’t necessary. I remember that the woman was dressed in black. Maybe someone in her life had died. I was sure however that the olive tree of that olive grove out there lacked for nothing: neither sun, nor a gentle breeze, nor a pleasing promise of fruit. And I asked myself, as I stepped down from the train:
“Why do we beat our olive trees?
A autêntica estação
É verão. Vou pela estrada de sintra
por sinal pouco misteriosa à luz do dia
ao volante de um carro que não é um chevrolet
e nesse ponto apenas se perdeu a profecia
Não há luar nem sou um pálido poeta
que finja fingir a sua mais profunda emoção
Chove uma chuva que me molha os olhos
e me leva a sentir saudades do inverno:
a luz o ceiro a intimidade o fogo
Quem me dera o inverno. Talvez lá faça sol
E eu sinta aflitivas saudades do verão:
Uma estação na outra é a autêntica estação
The True Season
It is summer. I go along the road to sintra
in fact not so mysterious in the light of day
at the wheel of a car that is not a chevrolet
and only at that point is prophecy lost
There is no moonlight nor am I a pallid poet
pretending to pretend his deepest feelings
A rain is raining that leaves my eyes wet
and brings me to feel a longing for winter:
the light the smell the intimacy the fire
How I wish it were winter. Maybe there the sun is out
and I feel a painful yearning for summer:
a season in another is the true season
Um prato de sopa
Um prato de sopa um humilde prato de sopa
comovo-me ao vê-lo no dia de festa
e entre dentro da sopa
e sou comido por mim próprio com lágrimas nos olhos
A Bowl of Soup
A bowl of soup a humble bowl of soup
I am moved gazing at it on this festive family day
and I enter the soup
and am eaten by myself tears in my eyes
Ruy Belo, who died in 1978, published eleven collections of poetry, four collections of critical writings, and numerous translations of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Blaise Cendrars, Garcia Lorca, and Saint-Exupery. His work has appeared in over thirty anthologies in Portugal, as well as in collections published in France, Spain, Italy, Serbia, Germany, Sweden, Latvia, Bulgaria, Holland, Mexico, and, of course, Brazil. Some of my recent translations of his work have appeared in or are about to appear in American Poetry Review, Catamaran, Delos, International Poetry Review, Metamorphoses, New Letters, Osiris, Per Contra, Plume, Rosebud, and Saranac Review.
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.