Além-A memória de Fernando Pessoa
(by Gil Vaz )
Sobre Atena imortal o Corvo impera
Fitando negro a Dor que se traduz.
Hoje Eleonora virtual conduz
As cinzas do que ardeu a sua espera.
Irmão do Génio americano ele era,
Na Lusitânia teve a sua cruz.
E sob o frio da saturnia luz
Lhe foi perdida a própria primavera.
Triste Poeta do que não existe
Senão em amargura sublimada,
Dormes qual o Menino que sentiste.
Dos laranjais a brisa perfumada
Vai modulando num afrago triste
A tristeza que foi abandonada.[i]
The Beyond-IN MEMORY OF Fernando Pessoa
Perched on the immortal Athena, reigns
The Raven, darkly fixed on the Pain it brings.
Today the potential Lenore carries ashes
of what was burned in this wake for her.
Brother to the American Genius that he
Was, he had his cross to bear in Lusitania,
And under the cold saturnine light
The spring that was his was itself lost.
Sad poet of what doesn’t exist, except in
Sublimated bitterness, you sleep the sleep
Of the Child you felt in your bones.
The scented breeze flowing from orange
Groves modulates still in a sad caress the
Sadness, the sadness that was forsaken.[ii]
[i] Presença, no. 48 (July 1936), p. 12.
[ii] Translated 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.
Image by Jacob Porat (http://fineartamerica.com/featured/fernando-pessoa-jacob-porat.html)
