Poems by Salgado Maranhão translated by Alexis Levitin

Scene of Words 17

How playful are the depths of our desire
–the starry constellation of a gaze– while
passing days burn away your armor.
Your altar is that fruit that howls
within its shell (not the pagan tree
that withered with its birds). I erect
a temple without doors in order to install
Springtime in your eyes. Love
is the science that burns in our veins
and in the conch shell
where the sea gives up its muscles. When
the breeze blows upon your gardens—strike back!
Nothing holds us within time except for
chaos as it sips from us the blood of our light.

Cena Verbal 17

Tão lucida é a fundura do desejo
—as orbitas consteladas— enquanto
os dias queimam tuas armaduras.
Teu altar é esse fruto que uiva
na casca (não a árvore pagã
que morreu com os pássaros). Alço
um templo sem portas para instalar
a primavera em teus olhos. O amor
é a ciência de arder as veias e a concha
onde o mar perde os músculos. Quando
a brisa soprar teus jardins—, revida!
Nada nos retém no tempo além do
caos que nos haure esta luz que sangra.

Scene of Words 18

I speak of the nourishing landscape of your lips,
mulberries that I have loved. Not of the rye
the earth struggles to provide. I feel the hunger
of Odysseus reaching Ithaka. Give me
that bush that awakens the dead;
give me that bread redolent of the moon.
The poem wants to plant a seed. The poem
wants to inhabit things filled
with wonder (that impassive flower
In your lap!) and there’s no kindling
for its flame.

Cena Verbal 18

Falo da paisagem nutriz em teu lábio,
do que em ti amora. Não do centeio
que a terra custa a doar. Tenho a fome
de Ulisses chegando a Ítaca. Dá-me
esse arbusto que acorda os mortos;
dá-me esse pão cheirando a luas.
O poema quer fecundar-te. O poema
quer habitar as coisas preenchidas
de espanto (essa flor impassível
em teu colo!) e não há lenha
para sua chama.

Scene of Words 19

Love is savage as a vampire.
Or a city of insurgent wolves.
From its womb petals of fire
rise to the vastness of its mouth (that,
in extremis, trembles).
But if I call your name to the gargoyles
of the night, it gives wings to my bed.
Is love a tiger satiated beyond strife
or lava’s pleadings surrounded by ice?

Cena Verbal 19

O amor é bárbaro feito um vampiro.
Ou uma cidade de lobos insurgentes.
De seu ventre as pétalas de incêndios
se erguem a vastidão da boca (que,
em ser extremo, se estremece).
Mas se grito seu nome nas carrancas
da noite, ele põe asas em meu leito.
O amor é um tigre saciado entre rivais
ou um súplica de lava entre os glaciais?

Scene of Words 20

To go on breathing what love
does not give to termites. I who reign
dweller in my arteries and in the open air, I enter
that constellation of sounds and things like that,
there where a flower turns to fable.
                                              And I follow
the corridors of the city of words,
as if the names of things were there
in me; the oil and the stitchings that
turn apart into a partner.
                                            And yet, I don’t
know where to store
the solitude of Sundays,
the wounded grain of those who still resist. Goodness
also has its teeth.

Cena Verbal 20

Seguir respirando o que o amor
não doou aos cupins. Eu que reino
Inquilino de artérias e relentos, abro
essa constelação de sons e assins,
no lado onde a flor é fabula
E sigo
os corredores da cidade de palavras,
como se em mim fosse o nome
das coisas: o azeite e a costura que
torna o à parte partner.
Porem, não
sei onde estocar a solidão dos sábados,
o grão ferido dos resistentes. Também
o bem tem seus dentes.

Alexis Levitin’s fifty books in translation include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm (1989) and Eugénio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words(2003), both from New Directions. He has published five collections of poetry by the Afro-Brazilian poet Salgado Maranhão: Blood of the Sun, Tiger Fur, Palavora, Mapping the Tribe, and Consecration of the Wolves. He has published four Collections of Ecuadorian poetry: Tapestry of the Sun: An Anthology (with Fernando Iturburu), Tobacco Dogs by Ana Minga, Destruction in the Afternoon by Santiago Vizcaino, and Outrage by Carmen Vascones. He has won two NEA Translation Fellowships and has been a translation resident at Banff, Canada, Straelen, Germany (twice), and at the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy.

Salgado Maranhão’s work has twice received Brazil’s most prestigious award, the Prémio Jabuti. In addition to nineteen books of poetry, he has written song lyrics and made recordings with some of Brazil’s leading jazz and pop musicians. He has received two Honoris Causa doctorates in Brazil and recently was inducted into the Maranhão Academy of Letters. His poems have appeared in translation in numerous magazines such as BOMB, Massachusetts Review The New York Times, Pleiades, Subtropics, and Words Without Borders. He has toured extensively in the USA with his translator, visiting well over one hundred colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Davidson, Tulane, University of Texas at Austin, University of Chicago and Northwestern University.