From De Senectute Erotica by Leonor Scliar-Cabral
Selections from De Senectute Erotica
Leonor Scliar‑Cabral (Brazil, b. 1933)
Translated by Alexis Levitin
Just One More Day
The scent of coffee
sweeps from the kitchen and invades the rooms.
I delay awakening
between life and dream,
uneasy tossing in my wasted sheets.
Image after image,
my fantasies, obscene and unconfessed,
dwell in the dimness
of a photophobia
that leaves me listless, slack and languorous.
A dry and bitter taste.
Just one more day, foreshadowed like the rest:
important nothings,
just routine disputes,
and posters cluttering the corridors.
Last Encounter
The mirror multiplies my wrinklings,
begrimed, dimmed and streaked with tenuous nerves.
Dorian Gray smiles
mockingly at me.
My nervous hands have covered up in cream
this parchment carved, inscribed with histories,
undeciphered signs
waiting to be read.
Above the palimpsest I show a face,
a mask of what I was and never was,
placing my left leg
on quite the wrong stair.
A starry sky of blemishes, my hand,
in secret, notes in my agenda book
impossible dates:
the last encounter.
At the Window
Sheet-draped, all the furniture,
useless the dinner table.
Slippers slowly dragging
from window to easy chair,
from easy chair to window,
from Monday on to Sunday.
From Sunday on to Monday,
the food of daily life,
the neighbor out there stopping
to chat with someone else,
some who marry, some who flee,
and some born just today.
And the forgotten viewer
listens at the window
to the food of daily life,
with the odor of verbena
on the sheet-draped furniture.
And the armchair sits and waits.
Bus Stop
For hours I stood beneath the neon light
at the bus stop that brought me nought,
and the bus came in without passengers,
and driver there was none.
Parading by, houses with their stages
where, around their well-lit tables,
families are chatting with their plates.
And I am there:
A child waves to me, we’re in cahoots,
and in the darkness of the bus in which I ‘m traveling
I return the gesture of one who leaves,
who leaves alone.
As If I Am Not Bound to Die
As if I am not bound to die
as if my grave is not awaiting me,
my only certainty,
without my making any plans.
As if I am not bound to die, I throw away
a waste of hours that will not come again,
confetti, little bits of paper,
just one more New Year’s Eve.
I spend hours on the balcony to see
if a stubborn sprout rising from a clod
will succeed in germinating
in the rotting straw,
or if the grass, final and triumphant,
peeking down the slope, protests
against the golden sheet
of burning petals.
And in the absence of a radio that doesn’t work
one hears far off rapid boats
that sail the tranquil sea
embroidered with its fishing nets.
A hammer beats out grave spondees,
announcing windows, doors and sills,
shelters for couples in love
and for shady dealings.
It’s always the same dogs, the same rooster,
bats whistling in the attic,
unnamed birds,
and a buzzing in the bushes.
And everything repeats itself afresh,
a squandering I avidly gather in,
as if I am not bound to die,
implacably.
Leonor Scliar-Cabral is a Brazilian poet and linguist. A leading figure in contemporary literacy studies in Brazil, she is also the creator of an influential teaching method designed to combat illiteracy; her book Aventuras de Vivi is currently used by education departments in the regions facing the country’s most urgent literacy challenges.
Her poetry has appeared in Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Offcourse, niv, and Persimmon Tree. In the United States, her first translated volume, Consecration of the Aleph Bet (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), introduced her voice to English‑language readers. She is presently completing a new collection in collaboration with translator Alexis Levitin, from which several poems have already been published.
Alexis Levitin is an award‑winning translator whose work has brought more than forty books of poetry and prose into English, with a special focus on voices from Brazil and Portugal. His translations have appeared in over one hundred literary journals, including Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, and The Literary Review.
He is the English translator of Leonor Scliar-Cabral’s Consecration of the Aleph Bet (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024) and is currently collaborating with her on a new collection, from which several poems have already been published. Known for his long‑standing dedication to international literary exchange, Levitin frequently gives readings and workshops across the United States and abroad.
