new one of mine...

Ties


He loves a devastated land
the warring tribes have stilled
but the uprooted fields, the children
with open hands and limp hair
cows gone to bone, still swaggering on their feet,
an utter impossibility to reconstruct –

it is not like the way his kinsmen repopulate,
not like the way age comes to green mountainsides
in the Pyrenees, where balding hikers set down to
an evening meal they have chosen to make meager, the dry wine,
the goat cheese, so carefully selected

perhaps a bit closer it is, to we who have chosen love
in its strangest formulae-
the broken-winged sparrows, our children’s freedom,
happiness or toil in the hardest tongues or feats.

Work in progress...

ORIENTAL BARBIE

Denise Duhamel
versão: Miriam Adelman

Ela pode ser do Japão, do Hong Kong, da China,
das Filipinas, do Vietnã, da Tailândia o da Coréia.
A menininha que brinca com ela pode decidir:
O sul, o norte, uma província
nebulosa. Tanto faz, segundo a Mattel, que relata
que esta Barbie continua tendo “olhos arredondados”
porém “boca e busto menores” do que
sua irmã dos EUA. As meninas, como alguns homens já crescidos
gostam da variedade, desde que bonita, desde que
haja cabelo comprido para mexer.
Num comercial nas horas noturnas, a Manhattan Cable
oferece um serviço de acompanhantes “Geishas to Go”
garotas do “Oriente, onde os homens são rei...”
O Ken Branco deita barriga para baixo
enquanto uma Barbie Oriental caminha sobre suas costas.
Ou é uma mulher de verdade pisando no Ken?
Ou uma Barbie Oriental pisando num homem real?
Você precisa viajar ao Japão
para comprar esta Barbie específica. Uma garota geisha
pode chegar à porta do teu apartamento em Nova Iorque
em menos de uma hora. Por sinal,
não existe um Ken Oriental.
Os que estudam o delicado equilíbrio
do comércio e câmbio americanos
entenderão.

Workin' on it...

Mais um poema da genial Denise Duhamel, que estou traduzindo.
Curtam primeiro a versão original:

ORIENTAL BARBIE
Denise Duhamel (from Kinky, Orchises Press, 1997)



She could be from Japan, Hong Kong, China,
the Phillipines, Vietnam, Thailand or Korea.
The little girl who plays with her can decide.
The south, the north, a nebulous
province. It´s all the same, according to Mattel, who says
this Barbie still has “round eyes”
but “a smaller mouth and bust”
than her U.S. sister. Girls, like some grown men,
like variety, as long as it’s pretty, as long
as there’s long hair to play with.
On a late night Manhattan Cable commercial
One escort service sells Geishas to Go,
girls from “the Orient, where men are kings…”
White Ken lies on his stomach
while an Oriental Barbie walks on his back.
Or is it a real woman stepping on Ken?
Or Oriental Barbie stepping on a real man?
You have to travel to Japan
to buy this particular Barbie doll. A geisha girl
can be at your door of your New York apartment
in less than an hour. Of course,
there is no Oriental Ken.
Those who study the delicate balance
of American commerce and trade understand.