Mantis 19 (Spring 2020)
Translation
Salgado Maranhão
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin
Poesia VI
Alguém guardará tua pupila (a
casca acesa do raio) na órbita
metalúrgica
da palavra.
Sou dos que rastejam
esse cardume.
Debandado,
crio ramas debaixo
da tua escama (ou
aguardo teu chuvisco
enquanto racham
minha telha).
O poeta é o imigrante
da linguagem.
Alguém guardará
teu veneno
num charco
de espelhos (e mentiras
com batom).
Alguém como eu,
que rega o impossível,
enquanto o sol adoça
as laranjas.
Poesia VII
Te aceito como se música
a tocar-me os ossos, como
se um rito
me abrisse
em brisa,
ó tiara de luas!
ó chão de chananas!
Vê,
o mar sangrou teus frutos
em minhas falésias. O mar
que é memória
e sagração.
Se disseres à lua nômade:
– dança sobre as águas, ó
flor invertebrada, ela
o fará.
Se exortares os perdidos
na noite insana,
eles verão teus rubis.
É assim que acendes a lava
mítica
na península em que me acordam
teus vulcões.
Poesia VIII
Cada vez que me visitas,
com teus cactos
sob a alma
impossuída,
com teus mares
e remos desatados,
me debitas
a cidade
de palavras; a
fronteira do outono.
Lume ardendo vocábulos
sobre os ruídos
da carne –,
é o teu nome. Asa
sitiada de luz
e cicatrizes.
Todas as coisas te predizem:
nos remotos milagres;
no campo aberto de sangue
e ciprestes.
E no sopro insigne
a dar chama
aos corações de palha.
Antes que a última vertigem
nos apague
este espelho
assustado,
traz o teu reino de sândalo
para dançar sobre o fogo.
Poetry VI
Someone will protect your eyes
(shells lit by a ray of light) in the
metallurgic orbit
of the word.
I am one of those who track
that school of fish.
Scattered in flight,
I create branches beneath
your scales (or
await your drizzling rain
while they split my roof
in two).
The poet is the immigrant
of language.
Someone will preserve
your venom
in a puddle
of mirrors (and lies
with lipstick on).
Someone like me,
watering the impossible
while the sun makes sweet
the oranges.
Poetry VII
I accept you as if you were music
touching my bones, as if
a rite
were opening me,
turning me to breeze,
oh, tiara of moonlight!
oh, yellow-petalled earth!
Look,
the sea has bled your fruit
against my cliffs. The sea
that is memory
and consecration.
If you were to say to the nomad moon:
--dance upon the waters, oh
invertebrate flower, she
would do it.
If you were to exhort the lost
in the insane night,
they would become your rubies.
That is how you set on fire the mythic
lava
on the peninsular where your volcanoes
shake me from my sleep.
Poetry VIII
Each time you visit me,
with your cactuses
beneath your unpossessed
soul,
with those tides
and unfettered oars,
you feed upon
my city
of words; the
frontiers of autumn.
A fire burning syllables
above the sounds
of flesh--,
that is your name. A wing
besieged by light
and scars.
All things predict you:
in remote miracles;
on the open field of blood
and cypresses.
And with resplendent breath
you set on fire
hearts made of straw.
Before the final ecstasy
snuffs out
our frightened
mirror,
bring your kingdom of sandals
to dance upon the flames.
SALGADO MARANHÃO, winner of all of Brazil’s major poetry awards, has toured the United States five times, presenting his work at over one hundred colleges and universities. In addition to fourteen books of poetry, he has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians. Four collections of his work have appeared in English: Blood of the Sun (Milkweed Editions, 2012), Tiger Fur (White Pine Press, 2015), Palavora (Dialogos Books, 2019) and Mapping the Tribe (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). A fifth collection, Consecration of the Wolves, is forthcoming from Bitter Oleander Press in 2021.
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.