Alexis Levitin (translator)
& Salgado Maranhão
From Pedra de Encantaria
Cantaria XVIII
De longe ouço o latido
da paz sulfúrica
na perversão cintilante.
(Já estava ali a delenda—
—em posição de sentido!—coligindo
incêndios).
Pobre das aves
que esqueceram a aurora
e a respiração do mar.
Pobre de mim
que esqueci-me.
De longe vem a sombra
que espalha seus ramos
sem flores.
Ante a manhã e o cipreste,
canta a serpente
entre as vinhas.
Stone Song XVIII
From afar, I hear the barking
of sulfuric peace
in glistening perversion.
(Disorder is already there —
—giving its salute!—assembling
its fires.)
Poor birds
forgetting the dawn
and the breath of the sea.
Poor me
forgetting myself.
From afar, comes a shadow
that spreads branches
without blossoms.
Facing the morning and the cypress tree,
a serpent sings
amongst the vines.
Cantaria XIX
Agora que o temor
insufla a casa—e “o morto
enterra os próprios mortos”—,
onde ocultar
meus sonhos náufragos?
Vem de longe
o olho que hospeda o breu.
E o preço da palavra,
e a corda dos credores.
Como calar as mãos
colhendo perdas?
Haverei de regressar
à memória: este báculo
que ultrapassa os vermes.
Haverei de debutar
noutra pele.
É tempo de lavar o outono….
Stone Song XIX
Now that fear
swells within the house — and “the dead
are burying the dead”
where can I hide
my shipwrecked dreams?
It comes from afar,
the eye that welcomes the ink of night.
And the price of the word,
and the creditors’ noose.
How to silence hands
that are gathering losses?
I must return
to memory: that staff
that overcomes the worms.
I must begin again
in another skin.
It is time to wash autumn clean…
Alexis Levitin’s forty-eight books in translation include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm (1989) and Eugénio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words,(2003) both from New Directions. He has published five collections of poetry by the Afro-Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhão: Blood of the Sun, Tiger Fur, Palavora, Consecration of the Wolves,and Mapping the Tribe. He has won two NEA Translation Fellowships and has been a translation resident at Banff, Canada, Straelen, Germany, and the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy.
Salgado Maranhão’s work has twice received Brazil’s most prestigious award, the Prêmio Jabuti. In addition to nineteen books of poetry, he has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians. He has received two Honoris Causa doctorates in Brazil and recently was inducted into the Maranhão Academy of Letters. His poems have appeared in translation in numerous magazines such as BOMB, Massachusetts Review The New York Times, Pleiades, Subtropics, and Words Without Borders.