Give me this voice
Six Poems by Salgado Maranhão (Brazil)
Translated by Alexis Levitin (United Estates)
Shell of Myths Two
by Salgado Maranhão
translated by Alexis Levitin
Throbbing on my shoulders
a basket of Empires (dynasties
in my arms
as I climb the crags of centuries),
throbbing in my ethnicities (oh,
black shacks of latices and drums!)
Throbbing.
In collapsed houses—
the shelter of those who die
without the name of god
on their lips.
Throbbing. He who coughs
in the cold night (or founders
with his feet in the mud).
Astonished by the moment,
I carry the trophy
of an anonymous cortege:
this fantasy mixed with dust—
and my dreams anchored
in my eyes.
There starts up in me the anguish
of beating through savannah brush
like someone seeking water
in a house on fire (the
inconvex end that survives
in language and its nutrients:
that stake from which voices
dangle.
I sparkle here this tale,
blinded by the dazzle of astonishment: a
Tiresias who sees through shadows.
(
A fertile silence;
my logic beyond all orbit
).
The franchise of my days throbs in me, facing
words on credit
and the tariffs of paradise; facing
those who kill for charity
and those who lie as if in prayer.
From all of this to the mutations
of usury,
all propellers to my flame,
and the poem howling in my guts.
a casca mítica dois
Está doendo em meus ombros
uma cesta de impérios (dinastias
em meus braços
sobre o penhasco dos séculos),
está doendo em minhas etnias:
meus cortiços negreiros.
Doendo.
Nas casas derramadas–
no abrigo dos que morrem
sem o nome de um deus
nos lábios.
Doendo. O que tosse
na noite fria (o que naufraga
com os pés no barro).
Siderado ao instante,
carrego o troféu
do anônimo cortejo:
esta fábula misturada ao pó–
com meus sonhos ancorados
nas pupilas.
Está em mim esta agonia
de bater às savanas
como quem busca água
na casa do fogo. (Ó
inconvexo fim que remanesce
ao idioma e seus nutrientes:
essa estaca pendurando vozes).
Daqui resplendo este enredo,
cego de alumbre e assombros: um
Tirésias que vê pelas sombras.
Está doendo a sucursal de mim, ante
as palavras a crédito
e as tarifas do paraíso; ante
os que matam por caridade
e os que mentem como rezassem.
Deste havido às mutações
da usura,
são minhas hélices de fogo
e o poema uivando com as vísceras.
Shell of Myths Four
by Salgado Maranhão
translated by Alexis Levitin
I am heir to those oblique
seas, that
even now
growl within my cries for help:
on the edge of flight,
at the threshold of the storm.
I myself
made incandescent by this artifice:
earth regurgitating pearls.
For what burns is the invertebrate
shadow (barely echoing
the invention of madness) and the vertigo
of ambush.
And so, to love
is to give oneself to the stable
where the soul is fodder.
For what burns
is darkness cleft by the heart.
And the mouth drawn in by the stars.
a casca mítica quatro
Sou herdeiro desse mar
oblíquo, que
ainda agora
ruge em meus apelos:
na fronteira do voo,
no limiar da tempestade.
Eu próprio
feito deste ardil em brasa:
chão que regurgita pérolas.
Pois o que queima é a sombra
invertebrada (mal ecoa
o invento da loucura) e a vertigem
da cilada.
Posto que amar
é dá-se ao estábulo
onde a alma é pasto.
Pois o que queima
é a treva fendida ao coração.
E a boca recolhida aos astros.
Shell of Myths Five
by Salgado Maranhão
translated by Alexis Levitin
Awakening this
sharpened cry of
sublimated city and backwoods
wilderness (or yearning
in software?),
I follow words,
seduced by desire,
my sex exposed
to the birds,
between utopias
and predators.
I conjugate, then, this night
trampled by the stars;
night liquid
as the moon upon the rocks.
I live by bearing firewood
to warm our destinies:
my arteries savage,
my nakedness close to the flames.
However, there is something that spreads
in the dark,
like a voice tearing down a wall.
Something that returns me again
to the gentleness of embers.
By now nothing glows beyond
the house of the birds; nothing
forever.
I am merely one who recycles dreams
in which to love is what we breathe.
And a crow flies over the dance.
a casca mítica cinco
Ao acordar
este grito em sustenido –
que é cidade e sertão
subliminar (ou saudade
em software?).
persigo as palavras
seduzidas pelo desejo,
com o sexo exposto
às aves,
entre utopias
e predadores.
Conjugo, então, esta noite
atropelada de estrelas;
noite líquida
como a lua sobre a rocha.
Vivo de carregar lenha
para aquecer destinos:
com as artérias ferozes
e a nudez rente ao fogo.
Porém, há algo que se dispersa
no escuro,
como se a dor rasgasse o muro.
Algo que me revida
à mansidão das brasas.
Já nada alume além
da casa de pássaros; já nada
nunca.
Sou somente o que recicla sonhos
onde amar seja o que exale.
E um corvo atravessa o baile.
Shell of Myths Six
by Salgado Maranhão
translated by Alexis Levitin
Just this: a field of swords
scattered inside me,
here, on this verbal weave
against the flow.
At this convocation of tigers.
The days torn by a rhetoric
of blood, by a vampire-
god spawned among the poppies;
by grain seared by cicada song,
crossing through customs
where fear is wagging its tail.
a casca mítica seis
Apenas isto: um campo de espadas
que se espalha dentro,
aqui, na teia verbal
da contramão.
No chamado dos tigres.
Os dias rasgados pela retórica
do sangue, por um deusvampiro
parido entre papoulas.
Ou o grão ferido das cigarras
que transmigra dessa alfândega
onde o medo abana o rabo.
Shell of Myths Seven
by Salgado Maranhão
translated by Alexis Levitin
Anatomic mud of origins
plurispeaks its oracle
in a caldron
of ecstatic light
(the stoic mud that leases
my demographies, my
Spartan spears).
To sing is to give birth
without coitus: the heart
gives itself at any price
no bar code at all.
And the body, that machine
of exile,
drowns us in a flood
of utter thirst.
And each one drinks from his own river.
a casca mítica sete
O barro anatômico da origem
plurifala eneagramas
no caldeirão
da luz extasiada
(no barro estoico que hipoteca
minhas demografias, minhas
lanças de Esparta).
Cantar é um parto
sem coito: o coração
dá-se ao preço
sem código de barras.
E o corpo, que é máquina
de exílios,
destampa em nós a inundação
que é pura sede.
E cada qual bebe o seu rio.
Shell of Myths Eight
by Salgado Maranhão
translated by Alexis Levitin
I cross the ground of those beings
who murmur from their heights,
before insistent clarity
and the erection of the word.
Even if I do not sing
the wheat of my memory
—and its impossible precision—
I will sing
the alphabet of villages.
From first wonder,
from the solitude of silent
things.
Give me this voice
that brings joy to the pines;
give me the sea
that batters pirates.
Every day,
a lie that yawns above
our bloodied tracks.
a casca mítica oito
Transito o chão desses entes
que arrulham do penhasco,
ante a conjugada claridade
e a ereção da palavra.
Mesmo que não cante
o trigo na memória
– e a nitidez impossível –
cantarei eu
o léxico das aldeias.
Desde o espanto,
desde a solidão das coisas
mudas.
Dai-me essa voz
que alegra os pinheiros;
dai-me esse mar
que açoita os piratas.
Cada dia,
é a mentira que boceja
o rastro ensanguentado.
We don’t know exactly how a poem becomes marvelous, but if you show me a marvelous poem, I will applaud it. We do not know exactly how we want to be seduced by a poem, but we want to be seduced by a poem. Newness isn’t born from nothing; it is born when it actually appears. Theory disappears when you have the moment of epiphany, when the beauty of the poem simply reveals itself. ~Salgado Maranhão
When I’m writing a poem, I read it aloud to myself or recite it to myself at least a hundred times. That’s how I learn some of my poems by heart, just by reciting them again and again. So even though I don’t speak the foreign language, I think that I can feel the rhythmic success of the poem in the target language because of my musical sensibility. ~Salgado Maranhão
When poetry is not a weave of sounds and music, I’m not very interested in it. Poetry purely of ideas generally doesn’t interest me. So both of us are firmly linked by our love of the sound of poetry. When we work together, we both listen to the poem in Portuguese and to the translation in English.
I have striven to retain a music in the English. This is created both by alliteration, assonance, slant rhyme, internal rhyme, end rhyme, but also by a constant attentiveness to rhythm. Let’s say rhythm rather than meter. I think that all my translations are marked by an attentiveness to the need of rhythm. I think without rhythm you don’t really have poetry, and Salgado feels exactly the same way about that. ~ Alexis Levitin
