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Two Poems, Camilo Pessanha

Translations

Two Poems, Camilo Pessanha

Nuno Amado

I. Imagens que passais pela retina, Camilo Pessanha

I

a João Jardim

 

       Imagens que passais pela retina

Dos meus olhos, porque não vos fixais?

Que passais como a água cristalina

Por uma fonte para nunca mais!...

 

       Ou para o lago escuro onde termina

Vosso curso, silente de juncais,

E o vago medo angustioso domina,

- Porque ides sem mim, não me levais?

 

       Sem vós o que são os meus olhos abertos?

- O espelho inútil, meus olhos pagãos!

Aridez de sucessivos desertos…

 

       Fica sequer, sombra das minhas mãos,

Flexão causal de meus dedos incertos,

- Estranha sombra em movimentos vãos.

I. Images that flicker across the retinas, translation Jeffrey Childs

I

for João Jardim

 

       Images that flicker across the retinas

Of my eyes, why is it you do not remain?

You who like the crystalline wáter

Of a spring flow on into never again!...

 

       Or into the dark lake that marks the terminus

Of your course, silent among the rushes,

And the vague anguishing fear begins to swell,

- Why leave without me, why not take me as well?

 

       Without you, what becomes of my open eyes?

- My pagan eyes, naught but a useless mirror!

The dryness of where desert upon desert lies…

 

       Not even the shadows of my hands remain,

Uncertain fingers flexed in casual repose,

- The strange shadows of movements made in vain.


Fonógrafo, Camilo Pessanha

 

       Vai declamando um cómico defunto.

Uma plateia ri, perdidamente,

Do bom jarreta… E há um odor no ambiente

A cripta e a pó, - do anacrónico assunto.

 

       Muda o registo, eis uma barcarola:

Lírios, lírios, águas do rio, a lua.

Ante o Seu corpo o sonho meu flutua

Sobre um paúl, - extática corola.

 

       Muda outra vez: gorjeios, estribilhos

Dum clarim de oiro – o cheiro de junquilhos,

Vívido e agro! – tocando a alvorada…

 

       Cessou. E, amorosa, a alma das cornetas

Quebra-se agora orvalhada e velada.

Primavera. Manhã. Que eflúvio de violetas!

Phonograph, translation Jeffrey Childs

 

       Still performing is a dead comedian.

The audience laughs hysterically

At the old fogy… And in the air is a scent

Of death and dust – the anachronic question.

 

       The register changes, there’s a barcarola:

Lilies, lilies, river waters, the moon.

Before His body my dream floats above

These marshlands – ecstatic corolla.

 

       It changes again: the chirpings, the refrain

Of a golden horn – the scent of jonquils,

Vivid and pungent! – trumpeting the dawn…

 

       It ceased. And, loving, the soul of the cornets

Came to an end, dewy and obscure.

Spring. Morning. What effusion of violets!

Clepsydra: The Poetry of Camilo Pessanha, courtesy In A Poem, Lda.


Jeffrey Childs is a professor at the Open University of Portugal and a researcher at the Centre for Comparative Studies at the University of Lisbon. Among other topics he has written on the war poetry of Randall Jarrell (“It was not dying: everybody dies, / It was not dying: we had died before”) and on the work of the contemporary poet Mark Strand (“In a field / I am the absence / of field”).