The Rain That Sweetens the Name of Things
IIt takes time for the sun to risebetween my fingers; the tidehas lingered in me and alreadyit is nightwhen the shipsdepart...Oh, holy madnessthat warms my souland its rooftop!I am that woundedanimal beneath the inventionsof hostile love;I am that trucein which forgiveness stirs the wheat.It takes time for the rain that sweetnessthe name of thingsto flow.For now, I arousemythologieswhen time ruminatesthe vampire's law.To live is to bleed.IITo bleed, one's fortune writtenby the scythe; to bleedwith wings stretching to the stars.Everything is a splintered mirrorto hide all questions. Everything.And what I have is what I retainin flesh and life: the obviousnails, signs of the border.Importunitieshowl in me— close to the boneand to desire.That is why I clingto that naked rage.My colts are starving—for light and goodbyes(and I've sold my mapsfor a shot of love).What I have nowis what the sea has left me;growling beside the rocks. IDemora erguer-se o solentre os dedos; demoramem mim as marés e jáe noitequando zarpamas embarcações...Ó loucura santaque me aquece a almae o seu telhado!Sou este animalferido sob o inventode amor hostil;sou essa tréguaem que o perdāoexorta o trigo.Demora escorrera chuva que adoçao nome das coisas.Por hoje, acordoas mitologiasem que o tempo ruminaa lei dos vampiros.Viver é sangrar. IISangrar com a sorte escritaa foice; sangrarcom a asa expandida aos astros.Tudo é lâmina de espelhospara esconder perguntas. Tudo.E o que tenho é o que guardoem carne e vida: os pregosaparentes, as marcas de fronteira.Estão bramindo em mimos assédios — rente os ossose ao desejo.É por isso que me agarroa essa ira despida.Estāo famintos meus potros —de luz e despedidas;(e vendi meus mapaspor um trago de amor).O que agora tenhoé o que me deixa o mar;para rosnar junto à pedras.
Feature Date
- August 21, 2024
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- Translation
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Copyright © 2017 by Alexis Levitin.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
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. He has toured extensively in the USA with his translator, visiting well over one hundred colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Davidson, Tulane, Univ. of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago and Northwestern University.
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, Mapping the Tribe, and Consecration of the Wolves, from which these two poems have been drawn. He has won two NEA Translation Fellowships and has been a translation resident at Banff, Canada, Straelen, Germany, and at the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy. His lone scholarly publication is W. H Auden at Work: The Craft of Revision.
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