Mantis 19 (Spring 2020)
Translation
Astrid Cabral
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin
Quem ?
Quem poderia dizer
porque atravessaste o rio
quando na margem de cá
havia frondes e sombras
flores em todo esplendor?
Mãos e ramos te acenavam
e o canto de muitas gargantas
embalava teus ouvidos.
Que ousadia ou medo
te levou ao outro lado?
Sobraram botas sandálias
e a dor desse segredo
machucando feito dardo.
Sei, não tens mais voz
para qualquer resposta.
Ó deuses surdos-mudos
quem, senão vós,
nos revelaria tudo?
Who?
Who could say
why you crossed the river
when on this bank
there was leafy foliage and shade
and flowers in full splendour?
Hands and branches waved to you
and a song from many throats
lulled your ears.
What daring or what fear
pushed you to the other side?
You’ve left behind your boots and sandals
and the pain of that secret
stabbing like a spear.
I know, you have no voice
with which to answer anymore.
Oh deaf-mute gods
who, if not you,
will unveil at last all things to us.
O Azul Assassino
O mar, o mar, oh deleite,
atravesso-lhe montanhas
e morros como se fossem de azeite.
Na pele o líquido luar
e a saliva sal das vagas.
Contudo eis que chegam a mim
sujo e ferrugem de quilhas
relíquias de sonhos a pique
sobras de mastros e velas
restos de monstros, de vidas.
Tudo escondido nas dobras
cheias de sombra, sem lume
do imenso azul assassino.
Lembrem-se apenas cardumes.
Blue Assassin
The sea, the sea, oh what unspoken joy,
I cross its mounds
and mountains as if they were of oil.
On its skin liquid moonlight
and the salt saliva of its waves.
And yet what comes to me is this—
filth and the rust of keels
relics of dreams gone down
debris of masts and sails
remains of monsters and of lives.
All of it hidden from the light,
in the shadow-filled folds
of that abysmal blue assassin.
May fish alone school our remembered nights.
ASTRID CABRAL is a leading poet and environmentalist who grew up in Manaus, on the Amazon River. She is the translator of Thoreau’s Walden into Portuguese. Recent collections of her poetry include The Anteroom, Gazing Through Water, Word in the Spotlight, Intimate Soot, and Cage. Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Runes, Sirena, Amazonian Literary Review, Bitter Oleander, Catamaran, Cincinnati Review, Confrontation, Dirty Goat, Evansville Review, Per Contra, Poetry East, Poets at Work, and Osiris. Her book Cage, translated by Alexis Levitin, appeared from Host Publications in July, 2008. Her book Gazing Through Water is forthcoming from Aliform Publishers.
ALEXIS LEVITIN has published forty-six books in translation, mostly poetry from Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. In addition to four books by Salgado Maranhão, his work includes Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugénio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both from New Directions. 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.