O VELHO QUE NÃO GOSTAVA DE GATOS
O velho meu vizinho odeia gatos.
Os meus filhos têm sempre gatos.
O velho não tem mais que fazer senão odiar os gatos.
E um a um os gatos desaparecem (ou aparecem mortos).
Com um sorriso cínico de avô (ou de avô cínico),
de vez em quando conversa com as crianças:
“Porque é que vocês têm sempre gatos?
Vocês não sabem que os gatos morrem ou desaparecem?
Os gatos gostam muito de peixe.
Eu dou sempre peixe a todos os gatos.”
[28/5/1970]
Jorge de Sena (1919-1978),
Sequencias (1980)
THE OLD MAN WHO DID NOT LIKE CATS
My neighbor, the old man, hates all cats,
and my children have always kept cats.
The old man has nothing better to do than hate cats,
and, one by one, the cats vanish (or turn up dead).
From time to time, with a grandfatherly, cynical
chuckle (or is it the chuckle of a cynical grand-
father?) he will question my kids, “How is it that
you always keep cats? Don’t you know that a cat
will disappear, that a cat will die? Cats really do
like fish. I feed all the cats fish, all of them.”
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.
Painting by Svetlana Novikova
