(Miguel Torga, August 12, 1907 – January 17, 1995)
When My Time Is Up
When my time is up
look for me in the dunes,
divided between the sea and the land.
Sea-farer and land-tiller, foam or foliage,
it’s all to my liking.
But if the great adventure that we await
is fruited with salt and with sap,
come steal me from the waves that I court
and from the shade of the mountains that cover me
with a lover’s tenderness.
Carry me naked to the feast of the combat
that will unite the seas and the continents.
Sea-farer and land-tiller, I shall have the entire ocean
of human hope,
and the universal land
of round and winged perfection.
(Miguel Torga, “Quando Chegar a Hora,” in Cântico do Homem, 1950)
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.
Foto de http://bolgdo51migueltorga.blogspot.ca/2010/05/quem-foi-miguel-torga.html
