(poema declamado por Olegário Paz)
Pedro da Silveira
ACABADO, MAS NÃO TANTO
Ao Alberto Ferreira
Agora restam-me só dois dentes
e a vista já não é o que antes era;
às vezes sofro de azias e náuseas
e vêm dias, como hoje, em que nem reparo
nas mulheres em flor que passam a meu lado.
É Fevereiro ainda, mas o tempo
é como se já fosse a Primavera:
um dia de sol, com flores coroando árvores
no jardim à beira de que estou parado
esperando um autocarro que não chega mais.
Olho as árvores enflorando, a relva verde-tenro,
e também uma nuvem que o sol da tarde
faz mais clara no azul claro do céu.
Vejo isto, e vendo-o esqueço
os dois dentes que só tenho, um deles cariado,
a vista baça e tudo o mais que diz
que o meu corpo envelheceu-
como ainda há poucos dias me lembrou o gesto
da rapariga que quis dar-me
o seu lugar no eléctrico à cunha,
de manhã à hora de a caminho do emprego.
Sim; o dia parece mesmo de primavera
e com isso apetece estar vivo, embora
sabendo que os anos andaram sobre o corpo que temos
e não renovamos, com rebentos e flores,
como as árvores que vou vendo enquanto não chega
-vem aí, finalmente!-
o autocarro que há bocado espero.
Abalado, esqueço de todo os dentes que já mal tenho
e a minha memória, nova agora como a tarde clara,
não tem fundo para além do dia de hoje
e das flores do jardim de há pouco.
Sim; mas há as coisas que às vezes me lembram
(e nem sempre sem que doa ou amargue)
que já não tenho a idade em que me diziam
-Pedro, vê lá o que fazes, toma juízo!
(Olhem, por lembrar:—esta manhã gostei de ver
como o meu canário começava o seu dia cobrindo
a canária que anteontem lhe pus na gaiola e agora
é a razão por que não me acorda como dantes, cantando.)
[from Poemas Ausentes (1999)]
DONE FOR, BUT NOT QUITE
To Alberto Ferreira
Now I’ve but two teeth left
and my eyesight is no longer what it used to be;
sometimes I suffer from heartburn and nausea
and there are days, like today, when I don’t even notice
women in their prime who pass alongside of me.
It’s still February, but the weather
is as if it were already Spring:
a day of sun, with flowers crowning the trees
in the garden at the edge of which I am standing
waiting for a bus that never comes.
I look at the flowering trees, the tender-green grass,
and a cloud as well that the afternoon sun
makes clearer in the clear blue of the sky.
I see this, and seeing it I forget
about the two teeth I have left, one carious,
my dimming eyesight and everything else that tells
me my body has gotten old—
just as a few days ago I remembered the gesture of the girl
who wanted to give me her place on the crowded streetcar,
in the morning rushhour.
Yes. This is like a spring day
and with that one has an appetite for life, though
knowing that the years have taken their toll on this body that is ours
and we do not renew, as do buds and flowers,
like the trees that I am looking at while it does not arrive
—here it comes, finally!—
the bus I’ve been standing here waiting for.
Excited, I forget completely the teeth that I have, just barely,
and my memory, new now like the clear afternoon,
has no bottom beyond this day
and the flowers in the garden of a moment ago.
Yes. But there are the things that sometimes remind me
(and not always without hurt or bitterness)
that I am no longer of the age when they would tell me
—Pedro, watch what you’re doing, grow up!
(Listen, it just occurs to me:—this morning I enjoyed seeing
how my canary began his day covering
the canary that the day before yesterday I put into his cage and that now
is the reason he doesn’t wake me up as he used to with his singing.)
[unpublished translation by George Monteiro]
George Monteiro is Professor Emeritus of English and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University, and he continues as Adjunct Professor of Portuguese Studies at the same university. He served as Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Brazil– Sao Paulo and Bahia–Ecuador and Argentina; and as Visiting Professor in UFMG in Belo Horizonte. In 2007 he served as Helio and Amelia Pedroso / Luso-American Foundation Professor of Portuguese, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Among his recent books are Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage, Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, The Presence of Pessoa, The Presence of Camões, and Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop and Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Among his translations are Iberian Poems by Miguel Torga, A Man Smiles at Death with Half a Face by José Rodrigues Miguéis, Self-Analysis and Thirty Other Poems by Fernando Pessoa, and In Crete, with the Minotaur, and Other Poems by Jorge de Sena. He has also published two collections of poems, The Coffee Exchange and Double Weaver’s Knot.
