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”).