REMEMBERING SOPHIA AS SHE ENTERS THE PANTHEON
(four translations by George Monteiro)
Spend the day within yourself.
Do not let anyone distract you.
There will come a poem -a new
one, so old-you won’t know
how long it’s lived within you.
An ocean green in muscle
An idol with the tentacles of an octopus
Incorruptible chaos that erupts
An ordained tumult
A contorted dancer
Surrounding the stretched-out ships
We crossed row upon row of steeds
That shook their manes in the trades
The sea turned suddenly very new and very old
To show us beaches
And a nation
Of men of recent vintage the color still of clay
Still naked still astonished
Planned by Lúcio Costa Niemeyer and Pythagoras
Logic and lyric
Greece and Brazil
Ecumenical
Proposing to all men of every race
The universal essence of the fitting figures
Brasilia plundered and lunar-like, the soul of a very young poet
Distinct as Babylonia
A willowy show of palm
Across the smooth page of the plateau
Has the architecture written its own landscape
Brazil has emerged from the baroque and found its number
At the center of the realm of Artemis
–Goddess of inviolate nature–
In the distant movements of the Candangos
In the distant nostalgia for the Candangos
Athena has raised her city of cement and glass
Athena has raised her ordered city, explicit as a thought
And there, in the sky-scraper, the delicate finery of the
Palm
I like to listen to the Portuguese of Brazil
Where words recapture their entire substance
Fruit solid distinct as a bird
I like to listen to each syllable of every word
Not missing even the lightest touch of a vowel.
Helena Lanari says “coqueiro”
And the very tree quickens.
