Nova tradução minha de um poema de Denise Duhamel.

 

new one... evoluindo ainda

 (Acordei hoje e escrevi este poema, que na verdade é mais como um fragmento de um poema longo em que venho trabalhando - em inglês, embora por vezes há coisas que nascem em português!)

O dia amanheceu querendo nos agradar.

Uma mulher entoava uma música.  Começou a chuva fina.

Ressoavam as palavras do poeta,  alguém que eu já conhecia

lembrando-me de cada gesto da manhã :     a criança que

aparece na sacada perguntando por que seu cachorro não

voltou, o início da jornada do vendedor de bilhetes

de loteria, a moça chegando para abrir a lanchonete.    

             As   boias   ou a âncora.      

As músicas eram bonitas     e nem do tudo

tristes.     Começava a chover mais forte e descendia das

montanhas uma névoa fria        envolvendo os corpos dos

          pés à cabeça    e minhas mãos também encetavam

uma metamorfose em veias azuis.

Uma mulher   - outra -    que usava um lenço escarlate

nos cabelos asselvajados   chegou para dizer que não havia tanto motivo

de preocupação         que a letra logo  

seria           a            nossa

        ****

[version]

 

The hastening day was trying to please us.

A woman began to wail out a tune.   

There were fine threads of drizzle falling and

the words that rang out were those of old man,

a fine master poet     calling me to cradle

each gesture of the early morning:  the child who

came out on the balcony, asking why his dog had not

returned from the night out, the lady selling lottery tickets

on the streetcorner, a girl lifting the heavy awning of a diner.

                Buoys or anchors.

The songs were lovely and in fact

                                not so sad.

It was beginning to rain and coming down  from the mountains

was a heavy fog    clinging to our bodies from head to toe

and my hands too began to show their purply veins.

A woman appeared    -  another -  wearing a scarlet headscarf

over her wilding tresses.  She looked me straight in the eye

as if to say    there was not such great reason for worry.

The lyrics would soon be our own.

There you are, fraying. There you are, living.

 

                                                      For Bruno, in memoriam.

 

                                     Who are we when we are not with each other?

                                             Who are we when we are not alone?

 

                                                                        Bhanu Kapil

 

1.

Perhaps I was never good at tending the plants.   I would skip a day, mess up the schedule, let our almost-bonsai grow large and wild and impossible to uproot.  But you were a friend to the green will to thrive.  Rubbery fronds sucking droplets of water into their cells,  shoots like nascent tongues suckling greedily for  nutrients. No matter the chaos.

2.

In Bruges there was a time to go back to.  I sat alone on a bench and pressed my eyelids together as tightly as I could, wanting only to hear the pattern of hooves clacking over cobblestone.  Groping for the past is a merciless task.   Our children smirk at our repeated stories and surge impatiently forward.  Mementos sit on our solitary laps.

3.

Sometimes paths cross, as if silvery birds, wings touching as they swoop in sudden synch. There are fish in the pond and an abrupt burst of sunlight, it takes your breath away. Other times paths are woven together, albeit slowly and despite the length of intervals and stitch.

 

4.

Two chilly cities, take your pick.  Long fugue of hours wrapped in the warm breath of cafés. Whorls of smoke and a wintry sun casting a shadow of delicate leaves against walls, spilling onto the sidewalks. Ways of being alive. (How many do we know?)  Then pick an idea or two. Our river is bursting with them.  A downstream rush, like shiny salmon pushed along belly up, toward the distant blackness of the sea.

Airport

 

I was looking for a quiet spot

But here you only get what you pay for 

And a comfortable chair, a place to stretch out your legs

Before or after the journey, it has all gotten pricey.

On the other side of the divide, the business suit crowd

chows down, some counting their calories,

others indulging. These are insatiable

 times. My friend says we keep steady

at the wheel because moving forward is the

spell of sleep  we've been cast into, or because

we are bound by our blood cells or our stories

to others  -  they deserve their chance. 

There is a fresh trail of tears along the highway.

I just figured out why my foot is hurting in time to my heart. 

I swallow my coffee,  imagine myself telling the server

                or even the pilot

 that none of this is the way we wanted it to be.

 Instead, I just count my change,

 pay the bill, mumble thanks, move on.  

Lucky me,  I still have cash  for the wings, 

or the wind on my sails.

Maria das Nuvens.

Many years ago, while I was living in NYC , I chanced upon a hard-covered copy of an English  translation of Maria Nephele, by Greek poet Odysseus Elytis,  in a Barnes & Noble sales basket.   I grabbed it up,  took it home and, finding it both enigmatic and intriguing, swore to someday do an “update”, reshaping the 'antiphonist' as another   female interlocutor,  of a different generation.  I finally got started on it several years ago, all the while  uneasy about what seemed to me a very bold venture.   I spent hours, days  poring over whatever lit crit I could find on Elytis and on Maria Nephele, yet  his poem, which still enthralls me, seems only partly decipherable.    Writing my own  "Maria das Nuvens" has reaffirmed my feeling  that I  understand its spirit,  although many nuances lie in a cultural and historical terrain in which I am a mere novice.  Since I am not at all convinced that I will find a venue to publish it - my few initial attempts have failed - I have decided to make it available here, through a link posted below, at the end of this excerpt. As usual, it remains a 'work-in-progress'.  And as usual, I welcome comments and suggestions.  

maria das nuvens

 

In my dream, yes.  In a great sleep which will come sometime,

full of light and warmth and little stone stairsteps.

Embracing, the children will pass in the streets just as in old

Italian movies. From everywhere you’ll hear songs and see

huge women on small balconies watering their flowers.

 

 

Who listened?  Who ever listened? Judges, priests,

 gendarmes, which is your country?

 

Elytis, Maria Nephele.

                              

Maria das Nuvens

 

i saw it with my own eyes.

the red antelopes came bounding

out into the streets, then stopped.

raising slender necks, they stretched

to catch a scent on the wind, tenderly

pawing the piles of debris. two small

children slipped out of the paint-cracked building,

took hiding behind an old station wagon,

in blue metallic sheaves of rust. two pairs of

dark eyes opened in awe. they had learned

to be silent.  i found a scrap of paper,

wrote everything down.

 

 

Antiphonist

when we first met i warned you

of the perils of the world, of

what it was like to come

back from the fields strewn with stubs

of trees and limbs. how the wind

pummelled the coastal night after

the last burst of light tapered into

a strange starless blackness.

you stand there, in your

futile efforts to look the facts

in the brutal pupil of their eyes, you,

a stubborn girl, wedded to the need

to search for beauty even

where so little may be left. 

 

animals move by a scent on the wind, while

life and death hover, human constructs.

 

we ignore what we choose to: what

nobody knows, everyone knows.

 

 

Maria das Nuvens

i was compelled to keep searching.

there was a spot on the beach where

two strangers pressed lips to lips. we

too indulged in gentle danger. far now

from the village but still a sense of doom

stuck to us, like tatters clinging to

 war- hardened bodies. broken shells

gouged the soles of my bare feet. the

seagulls around me were tame, came

begging.

 

 

Antiphonist

 

days step in slowly

one after another

as if offering a bit more time

to chart some new course,

as humanity bobs up and down

in the waters it has sullied -

the rubble, the entrails, the pieces

of plastic and fragments of metal,

and the wounded creatures of

the sea...

(if you'd like to read the rest, kindly follow this link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s4efLgtrzH3pWEngssqQ4UZfCOAaq7bN/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116745013077065511932&rtpof=true&sd=true

Mekong

 

                for Marguerite Duras

In the dry season of the Mekong

It is up to us to carry the buckets,

Douse the cabin with water, make our

Own river to sluice away dust and scorpions.

We stack the chairs. Build a bridge

With the tables. Bathe the floors in

Yellow-foaming soap.  It is time to rejoice

Our mother tells us. We can dance barefoot, sing

And she will play her piano again

The only tune she knows

The only one we’ll keep

Forever.

Sign Language Barbie

Sign language Barbie.

     for Denise Duhamel  (my attempt at "Kinky" -inspired poetry,

                                           albeit feeble by comparison)

Barbie floats center stage in her pink dress, her paper-faced

husband forcing a smile.  He is struggling to remember

the gist of the speech she 'll deliver.  Barbie twists her mouth

in a momentary grimace,   not wanting to come off too self-assured,  

the lights that will halo her,   the clumsy demeanor of her

husband, so purple and smothered in his raincloud of fibs.  But

then she's reminded of duty, how she signs to those who can't

hear,  of the image to  recover and the  peanut -crunching crowd. 

The irresistible charm of the  charitable,  like  those English ladies in a film

 she once saw,  so polished in gentle arts of distraction,  so  promptly disguising 

 their scorn for the handmaids. The generals all rode horses back then,

 raised their spectacles to read maps,  wrote home to women in long dresses and

white gloves.  She has never read a British novel, not even a book of etiquette

but swears she has mastered it all by intuition, and the frequent trips to her top-notch

stylist.  In this brave new world, Mattel now offers plastic sheep and pastures,

 a Cyclops to conquer and even Rambo Ken who can morph into a real man, ready to pull

his gun at the first traffic fight.  Yet this Barbie has issues:  how to manage the multiple

movements of  wrists and fingers, make hands that sweep softly up and down in

gestures not too robotic. Mattel calls its engineer army into action, hoping this Barbie

can bring  some good sales to a falling market, one where girls are always wanting more

out of life.   After all, is she not an embodied saviour, poised to return to the unborn their value,

some quiet to the streets,  and a choir of angels to  home and  hearth?

water

i would wish you luck if i could.

if desire were not in the picture,

in  the wind.  if talk were cheap.

if the pools of water  reflected

 nothing. thick veil it is that

 pulls the rain over the

 city, this one that you once

dreamed of,  this one in which

i almost drowned. so thanks be there 

to some unbroken goddess that

 we still got our day of sunshine, the

silver respite of the road,  our chariot

of galloping ponies fit neither for  tropics

nor  northern woodlands.  as we lay

in the clearing i thought for a moment

we might find some  berries, share

the  red juice dribble over drying leaves,

a return amid the thick  amber

dust,   taking perhaps the longest

path homeward.  now it is

this water that sends me out

again into the thickness,  hands

and breath moving counter to despair

seeking short  or connected acts of

survival, and there is no lifeboat you can

take to reach me,  here on the brink of

this sea that is our mother, her daughters

  rising higher than the tide

Frank O' Hara/ nova tradução em andamento

 NOW THAT I AM IN MADRID AND CAN THINK.

I think of you

and the continents brilliant and arid

and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air

as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning

and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York

see a vast bridge stretching to the humbled outskirts with only you

          standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree

and in Toledo the olive groves' soft blue look at the hills with silver

      like glasses like an old lady's hair

it's well known that God and I don't get along together

it's just a view of the brass works to me, I don't care about the Moors

seen through you the great works of death, you are greater

you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone

AGORA QUE ESTOU EM MADRI E CONSIGO PENSAR.

Penso em você

 e nos continentes cintilantes e áridos

e no esbelto coração que você divide dividindo minha parte  com o ar da América

como os pulmões que senti num diminuir sonoro, saúdam devagar a manhã

e os teus cílios marrons esvoaçam revelando duas alvoradas perfeitas cores de Nova Iorque

vejo uma ponte enorme que se estende até os humilhados subúrbios onde só você

    em pé à beira do púrpura como uma única árvore

e em Toledo o suave azul dos oliveirais,  olho para as colinas prateadas

    como óculos como o cabelo de uma anciã

é fato conhecido que Deus e eu não nos damos muito bem

para mim é uma simples oficina de latão, não me importo com os mouros

vistas através de você as grandes obras da morte, você é muito maior 

você está sorrindo, você está esvaziando o mundo para que possamos ficar a sós

tradução:  Miriam Adelman

Assia Djebar and I.

Going away would return me to myself. Far away, a foreigner at last - the fruits and the pulp of being foreign, a foreigner even to my memories and my future.  Vacant, nascent. To leave!

Assia Djebar, The Tongue's Blood does not Run Dry: Algerian Stories

(For Assia)

there is rain washing this

  chance of desert,  aroma

of oasis and pine.  there

is a winter white which in the

fugitive sunlight could be warning,

  could be

       warming, could

                     almost be the white

of yr blanched algiers

walls, and blue doorways

   adorned with a chain of bells

   and a fine yellow script

and white veils blowing along the

street, imperceptible patter of feet

over the ancient cobblestone -

       as if there were no one 
       inside, nothing but air
       and muted desire, as if 

there were never

a boat at the dock,

a light at the end

of the tunnel.

                   Image: Miriam Adelman (Street art, Montevideo)

Só quis...

Só quis estar no mundo.

Era muito simples.

Ouvir muitas línguas,

Olhar nos olhos

Pegar um trem ou andar no vento,

Ou  até num grande navio que

Se navegasse para uma ilha

de promessas cor esmeralda, eu ia

mas se afundasse, também ia

afundar-me junto com os outros,

para quê um solitário

   destino

 de sobrevivente?

Algum segredo procurava

Mas sabia que eram todos mentira,

Que a chave era apenas o mais simples

Repetido de outra maneira

Com ar de interessante ou triste

Como  passar uns dias de pão e água.

Qual a raiz e o quê é superfluo?

Há apenas a busca, apenas a esperança

Que o gesto conte.

Fresco

she called out for father
but it was mother who came.

the walls of the city had been painted

blood red.
 scenes of destruction were everywhere,
  and families  indulging

   their last supper, a field strewn

  with wine goblets, plates broken,  

  bones of boar and quail.
  (this was before they invented

        perspective.)

lastly a vision,

a dark coiling corridor

and a single atrium,

  splattered in

light