last words

A translation of one more poem by the great Mário Quintana.


THE FINAL POEM

All through my extreme unction
I was abstracted...
Ah, this hopeless obsession with thinking about something else! 
Incidentally, everything is always something else - the secret of poetry.
As the priest's voice came sounding like a beetle,
I was thinking of my first shoes
treading and treading,
to this day, 
the paths of this world.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the meaning of saudade

Image
Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) is an extraordinary Brazilian writer of Jewish descent. The stream of consciousness in her writings is superb and searches the depths of the soul. From her crônicas , a typically Brazilian journalistic text on any aspect of life in general: "Saudade" is a little like hunger; only when one eats the presence is one satisfied. But sometimes this longing is so intense that even their presence is not enough - one needs to absorb the other completely. This urge to be someone else in order to be one with them is one of the most demanding feelings in life. ... And I learned that Dr. Lourival, on reading my dedication, said, "Clarice gives so much to others, and yet she asks for permission to exist." Yes, Dr. Lourival, I humbly ask to exist and humbly beg for some joy, for something to be thankful for; I pray that I may be allowed to live a life with less suffering; I ask for fewer trials, fewer rough times; I ask men and women to ...
Read more

searching for words that do not exist

Image
All too often a writer's powerful poetic diction is distorted in translation in order to make it easier for the reader to understand. Like blunting a knife. An extraordinary writer like Carlos Ruiz Zafón, however, speaks also through the images his language evokes. A simplified translation that merely "tells the story" is not good enough. I now offer my own translation of an excerpt from the first chapter of his masterpiece  La sombra del viento : Shortly after the civil war, an outbreak of cholera took my mom. We buried her in Montjuic on the day I turned four. All I remember is that it rained all day and all night, and that when I asked my dad if heaven was crying, he was deeply moved and couldn't speak. Six years later, the memory of my mom was like a hallucination to me, a silence full of screams that I had not yet learned to appease with words ... I grew up among books, making invisible friends out of pages that crumbled in dust and whose smell I still have ...
Read more

away from you

Image
Florbela Espanca (1894-1930) is unmatched in the intensity of her love poems . Fernando Pessoa's much celebrated poetry seems shallow in comparison with the eloquent images of her pulsating verses. I here offer a new translation of her magnificent sonnet “Fumo.” Smoke Away from you, the paths are deserted, Away from you, no moonlight, no roses; Away from you, only silent nights, Days without heat and eaves without nests! My eyes, two poor old folks Lost throughout wintry nights... O f caressing hands dreaming, Your sweet hands of tenderness! The days are autumn: weeping... weeping... With purple chrysanthemums fading And murmurs of secrets so painful... I now invoke our dream, my hands stretched out! Oh, take it, my love, before it's all gone Like light smoke escaping through my fingers...
Read more