Se eu pudesse fazer com que viesses
Todos os dias, como antigamente,
Falar-me nessa lúcida visão
-Estranha, sensualíssima, mordente;
Se eu pudess contar-te e tu me ouvisses,
Meu pobre e grande e genial artista,
O que tem sido a vida-esta boémia
Coberta de farrapos e de estrelas,
Tristíssima, pedante, e contrafeita,
Desde que estes meus olhos numa névoa
De lágrimas te viram num caixão;
Se eu pudesse, Fernando, e tu me ouvisses,
Voltávamos à mesma: Tu, lá onde
Os astros e as divinas madrugadas
Noivam na luz eterna de um sorriso;
E eu, por aqui, vadio de descrença
Tirando o meu chapéu aos homens de juizo . . .
Isto por cá vai indo como dantes;
O mesmo arremelgado idiotismo
Nuns senhores que tu já conhecias
-Autênticos patifes bem falantes . . .  
E a mesma intriga: as horas, os minutos,
As noites sempre iguais, os mesmos dias,
Tudo igual! Acordando e adormecendo
Na mesma cor, do mesmo lado, sempre
O mesmo ar e em tudo a mesma posição
De condenados, hirtos, a viver-
Sem estímulo, sem fé, sem convicção …
Poetas, escutai-me! Transformemos
A nossa natural angústia de pensar-
Num cântico de sonho!, e junto dele,
Do camarada raro que lembramos,
Fiquemos uns momentos a cantar!

 Antonio Botto, Tristes Cantigas de Amor

In Memory of Fernando Pessoa

If I could make it so that
You’d come each day, as of old,
To speak to me with that clarity of vision-
Strange, sensual, mordant;
If I could tell you and have you hear,
My poor, great, genial artist,|
What life has been-a bohemia
Decked in rags, covered with stars,
Sad, proud, and fraudulent-
Since my eyes, through a mist of tears,
Saw you in your coffin;
If I could, Fernando, and you could
Hear me, we’d return to the same: 
You, there where the stars and
The divine dawns wed in
The eternal light of a smile;
And I, down here, slowly in disbelief
Taking my hat off to men of reason . . .
Things here are going as before;
The same bleary-eyed idiocy
In some types that you know all about
-Authentic smooth-talking rascals . . .
And the same scheming; hours, minutes,
Nights – always the same thing, the days all alike,
Everything the same. Waking up, falling asleep
By rote, on the same side, always
The same air and in everything the same position
Of the condemned, stiff, living-
With no stimulus, no faith, no convictions.
You poets, listen to me! Let’s transform
Our natural anguish of thought –
Into a dreamy canticle and spend a few
Moments in song with that singular
Companion we all remember.

[Unpublished translation by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.