Amaro
Translated by Ana Hudson
Trespass
Translated by Patricia Odber de Baubeta and Margarida Vale de Gato
Portuguese Crowberries
Translated by Patricia Odber de Baubeta and Margarida Vale de Gato
Margarida Vale de Gato translates, writes, teaches and researches. She is Assistant Professor in American Studies in ULisboa, School of Arts and Humanities. As a literary translator, she has translated canonical French and English authors into Portuguese (Sarraute, Michaux, Carroll, Yeats, Twain, Kerouac, Munro). She has published the poetry collections Lançamento (Douda Correria, 2016) and Mulher ao Mar (Mariposa Azual, 2010), with the enlarged editions Mulher ao Mar Retorna (2013). and Mulher ao Mar e Grinalda (2018). For the stage, she wrote with Rui Costa Desligar e Voltar a Ligar (2011).
Ana Hudson has a BA in Modern Languages and Literatures (Portuguese and French) from Universidade Nova in Lisbon and an MA in Portuguese Studies/History Path from King's College London. She is responsible for Poems from the Portuguese (www.poemsfromtheportuguese.org), the most comprehensive online (and offline) anthology of 21st century Portuguese poetry translated into English, which she set up and devised in 2011. She lives in England.
Patricia Odber de Baubeta was Director of Portuguese Studies in the University of Birmingham, lecturing in language, literature, and translation until 2015 when she retired from academic life with the title of Honorary Senior Lecturer. Nowadays she reads voraciously, collaborates with colleagues on interesting projects, writes short articles, book reviews and prefaces, and translates short stories and novels from the Portuguese.
Ana Hudson has a BA in Modern Languages and Literatures (Portuguese and French) from Universidade Nova in Lisbon and an MA in Portuguese Studies/History Path from King's College London. She is responsible for Poems from the Portuguese (www.poemsfromtheportuguese.org), the most comprehensive online (and offline) anthology of 21st century Portuguese poetry translated into English, which she set up and devised in 2011. She lives in England.
Patricia Odber de Baubeta was Director of Portuguese Studies in the University of Birmingham, lecturing in language, literature, and translation until 2015 when she retired from academic life with the title of Honorary Senior Lecturer. Nowadays she reads voraciously, collaborates with colleagues on interesting projects, writes short articles, book reviews and prefaces, and translates short stories and novels from the Portuguese.
Amaro
When man stepped on the moon in my grandfather’s café I wasn’t there [I’ve written about this before regarding another matter but (montage, conspiracy, improbable soles of astronomical proud boots dragging a foot edited by the angle of the wind waving gold blue red and white and pure Americana forever) definitely the poem is not the same; the theme here underlines who my grandfather was he owned a café and a TV set, back then, a precious cubic box that gathered everybody around space, except me; I wasn’t born yet, and therefore I totally regret not being there when the first man got to the moon] in Vendas Novas the café stood opposite the barracks and the youths were trained to kill overseas because of a man who thought he still governed Portugal but he wasn’t there either and most likely didn’t see a thing didn’t hear a thing didn’t notice a thing even if we imagine some hoarse small portable radio being held by his faint hand next to his faint heart, wobbly chair from which he had already fallen without realizing a thing, unaware of the youths and the latter as payback ignoring all about him all their eyes and attention by the future hanging on Neil Armstrong’s every breath far away on the moon in Amaro’s television set black on white the dominos on the marble top in slow motion past time war regime overthrown oh light fleeting heart my grandfather in the middle of his café the sawdust like snow from the heavy boots on the moon which he wiped after the troops’ withdrawal forming a fantasy line and he ever attentive alert diligent sweeping as he always did eyes half-lit fabulous stars of joyfulness and I wasn’t there nor was I there when years later (I was eighteen) his heart stopped and I found out in a blow the first time someone died the moon didn’t shake my faithful grandfather needless of technology went up to the sky.
Trespass
on Maria Teresa Horta I didn’t cling to the lyrics but I preyed on her topics: the dreadful childhood understanding nothing and the only respite in the horses’ fetlocks kicking the hay fantasizing rescues I didn’t follow the tone but marked her music the mothers’ speech the servants’ riddles two fingers of jongleresque and an odalisque’s dildo disturbing the libido of the Latin intellectual Yet, I came very late to spy in the garden from which she made a gown of satin and fervor that she lined with magical thorns similar to the forms she freed for us with the donkey skin she donned. Stripped, however, I wonder In my effrontery that shatters the nude in the mirror why only I do not fire.
Portuguese Crowberries
Before the mists of sea amidst tenacious acacias and crowns of thistles with prickles strewn in shrubs, they sprout firm sperm drops on vast dunes— zest-flooding thirst-quenching I gorge and bloom I bite and sip with greed and stealth and in between the teeth the seeds grit which back at you I spit. for all composure meek and mild these white berries and wild— endemic bareness.
IDEALIZATION
I fashion with care poetry and words life and its stories the stars and the characters I use in my life Between verses estancias gardenias and just before dawn spinning and weaving I fashion the passion and the rose of my work
