Foto/fonte: http://www.onordeste.com/

LUCILA NOGUEIRA

TEXTS IN ENGLISH

(Translated by Marina Nogueira Martensson)

Because you know nothing about insomnia

do not come here so unexpectedly carrying a universe of protocol sentences

and such pasteurized hygiene of tenderness

be careful and do not come too close

there is a part of me that no one has ever reached

and desperation always obliges us to believe in everything

I am becoming increasingly afraid of this sudden feeling

the water that washed away the letters in the library

is a sign that love and word demand renewal

that so much studying does not resolve helplessness

and that I am still an uninhabited house

I pretend to be autobiographic and reborn as a character

electroshock spasm I serve my lord

electricity cascade I serve my lord

and it is enough that your tone of voice becomes less tender

to cause me pain

like a person who selects a rocket salad

from a dark velour menu

you are sitting in an iron armchair

that is already being swallowed

by the volcanic ocean of my insanity

I do not know why everything came to me so slowly and calmly

but suddenly there was that snap that click

and in the intervals of speech you did not understand

my reverse manner of singing blues

you did not understand anything

you did not realize that I am an used matchstick

forgotten in the soot with memories of the past

that life falls heavily on my bluish hair

and that for a large screen to lose its coloring it is enough that one battery wears down

that is why I come to you in a giant soap bubble

blown by a papaya tree straw from my childhood back yard

where I learnt about the night the sun the colorful crystals and the gypsy songs

from there it is enough that you touch me and I return to life

the spell and the wizard are broken

and I leave towards reality, flesh that loosens itself from the pages of a book

I write about life as a sort of exorcism

I do not regret what I experience

my poetry is synonymous to my exposed skin

in the implosion of the Berlin Wall of physical sentiments

red light

empty faces

I walked through the avenue covered in algae

like an insignificant pin attracted by a magnet

and I forgot to sleep wandering on roofs

in search of the most precise words

when I finally realised that what really matters is always implicit

and now

I only need you to hear my subterranean voice

flowing beyond all surfaces

although nothing in me is safe

I want you to observe with perplexity that I have style

and the melancholy of my bright eyes

nervously passing through the cosmos like a neutrino

submarine clay of seismic tremors in an empty street of a Sunday morning

today I do not have company to go out and drink some wine

nothing happens and I do not know what to do to keep myself alive

nothing happens and I stay inert no regress nor departure

I need to change a life that no longer suits me

but I am tired of always being the one to take all initiatives

you did not understand anything

and I was just telling the truth

that suddenly I became troubled

you only read me to find your own words

but I come from a race of travellers and acrobats

and a storm of lightning flashes on my delicate gestures

my body fluctuates like syllables of frozen images

and in this disarticulated oppression I desperately decide to stay silent

but I do not forget the invitation to see the stars in a Moroccan desert

cliffs

to come back here and await destiny and luck

sentinel of nothing

and life passes by as clouds by the window

next time I will be more careful

because I know in the other times I’ve destroyed everything

due to fear of facing reality

I will make a call

I will talk to you later

I cannot wake up right now

do understand that I carry the longing of migrating birds

flying over mountaineers in the polar circle

because you know nothing about insomnia

and there is a part of me that no one has ever reached

and desperation always obliges us to believe in everything

I am becoming increasingly afraid of this sudden feeling

BUT DO NOT TAKE SO LONG

The body – they say – will not be the same

in its exterior reflection,

but say something about the phosphorescent caverns

where the demon’s hunger navigates

in his time of resplendence

Look at my ancient body in the fountain’s arc or on the ship’s rudder.

I am a troubled nocturne bird.

I offer you my extremely white breasts

in a secret stairway in the Caspian Sea.

Someone spoke incautiously

and the gargoyles of Notre Dame

contoured the nipples

as brief and clandestine will-o’-the-wisps.

The body – they say – will not be the same,

desperately I desire you

while I navigate through the subterraneous rocks

on the edge of human consciousness

and the crack on the atmosphere interferes with the luminous zone

right in the center of the broken television screen.

Because at that time

love was like a drunken prince

and forcedly Hindu

it was like the hoarse voice of Dionysus

making sounds like the keys of an Austrian piano

abandoned on the red catwalk

of a carnival of feathers at Bom Jesus Street.

Intoxicated I walked through the anchorage

dragging scarlet chandeliers

through the river of neon signs

while the rain stroked the hard nipples of these breasts

always burning of so much love.

All were too many and did not know

but when you grabbed me powerfully I was shyly surprised

and even today I am still on the run surrounded by palm trees

through the liquid roads of wine and neon.

I say the illusion of this moment continues to be urgent

attacked by unutterable confessions.

Utopia detained in the humid cartilage,

when your mouth covers my breast once again

we will be the two other faces

of the same possession,

like a story attached to another story

while licking the sealing wax of a letter written in childhood

that was almost erased by suddenly warm water.

How to say it, in a way that you do not find it strange: refuse me

because the nude lady on the telephone could be in trance

the one who you so much desire under the red flashlights

while rain covers the roofs at seashore.

Everything has become so urgent now

that it hurts me this immemorial wait for the dolls

laying on the dark wood

immovable but not inert

awaiting their magic performance

breaking the banality of television news.

The green satin blouse has the cleavage of a Jewish princess

assassinated nude in a concentration camp

splendid violinist, let’s go mad slowly.

The green satin blouse gives a glimpse of the dead piece of white flesh

under the light of a phosphorescent globe

rotating over dancers

who tomorrow will be invisible at Bar Royal.

Close your eyes and think about whatever you want

while our hands and lips accomplish the itineraries of mirages in a desert

while I play once again

my Austrian piano at the wharf’s sidewalk

as the sea almost breaks through the Dalinian windows of Armazém XIV.

Because the spirit is always the same

I challenge your preference

and the green satin blouse without my body underneath it

still has an ocean of spangles

reflecting the skin’s vibration

which was inhabited for some moments.

Gigantic dragon

demoniac tongue

clandestine union

reverse enchantment

volcanic abyss

where a music sheet came undone in notes covering the staff

that guides the cellist to the Palace of Crystal.

Close your eyes and kiss me gently

because everything has became more urgent

from the Serralves Museum

and the pink drawings of marble

Recife roads are revealed in walled skin

dreaming about the ecstasy of resurrection

Your eyes have the same glow of a knife shooter’s eyes

while I rotate attached to the wheel over my own body

dramatically tied by ropes

to the sound of Tchaikovsky in Opening 1812.

Your eyes are like a millennially gigantic bell

patrolling from the landings of Régua to the sidewalk of Copacabana Beach,

your eyes are like a Viking boat asking for harbor

from the coconut trees of Recife to the green Galician pine trees

that gave shadow to my great-grandparents' romance.

I know that you may come under the moonlit snow

bringing a flashlight on the neck of a white horse

and you will take me by gallop in your dark velvet cape

while in the abandoned circus

the acrobat will continue to sleep

completely nude

in the lions’ cage.

I know that you may come ferociously bewitched

to this kidnapping announced to make cross the waters of Capibaribe and Douro

and we will dance to the light of a seven-armed chandelier

until the sun dries off the seven skirts

that were removed to the sound of the seven violins

during the seven nights of enchantment.

But do not take so long.

That loving is the art

of making oneself present

and all we need

is poetry,

madness and emphasis

in the heroic act of reopening doors

of the tame flesh which was blemished.

The body - they say – will not be the same

and that which was harassment can be redesigned into escape

and even us - they say - we will not be the same

in the strange instant of laser beam

in which the pleasure of the morning will arrive unannounced.

WOMAN AT SEA

(Essomericq’s Speech)

Bom Jesus Street on a Sunday afternoon

Drums and bugles

frevo and maracatú

Mother Africa

arrived chained as slave

today her face is like a stamp on my homeland

Bom Jesus Street on a Sunday afternoon

the crowd dances in the street

here I come

holy poverty in queen’s dress

here I come

your drum’s joy revives me

your bugles’ joy by the sidewalk

beheaded heads like masks

are the men who I loved

in submissive anthropophagic ritual

cannibals prior to Montaigne

are the castaways of Audierne bay

and my silence hurt you in your land oh Goneville

because it was the desperate voice of Caliban

against the occupation of the Americas

powerful Goneville

I am Carijó and I should return to my tribe

Martinho de Nantes

I am Cariri and I should return to my Recife

Villegagnon of Brittany

I am Carioca and I want to go back to Rio

to Antarctic France, to Equinoctial France

to the arms of Azenor, Levenez and Riwanon

therefore teach me to write

Jean de Léry

because I am Tupiniquim

teach me the witchcraft of the paper that speaks

French words derived from Tupi

teach me your science

Lévi-Strauss

because I am tupinambá

and I give you back your childhood

Marcel Proust

and I give you back the dream

mon Ronsard

with the spell of sugar

in the senses

I give you back

le tranquille repos de la première vie

viens dans ma chaumière

dedans il fait si bom

reste ici

and then you asked me

reste ici

and then you requested to me

un peu de bonheur

mais je suis le beau sauvage

and I have been to Nantes

oh Júlio Vernesó

to tell you

that there in Olinda

I sailed vraiment

a northeastern raft

it was the wind on my face

la tempête

it was the sun on my skin

between the ships

je suis desamparée

woman at sea

j’ai besoin de secours

woman at sea

oh brave strong wind

Pernambuco

veli corsária drifts

in the drekar

gondola canue

rabelo balandra

zambra sultana

arvingel baidar

my raft

to port

to starboard

barge of lights

lighthouse bed

the pink tower

on the verge of the quay

free from tugs

come visit

oh Goneville

Venus the prisoner

laying on the foam

of a trapeze of feathers

I am Tapuia

we are all children of Saturn

I reunite your chopped pieces

Yemanjá in day of offering

woman at sea.

VENETIAN MIRROR

I thought the poems were dead

so I opened the books with no fascination

scarlet glass on grey armour

branch of roses over snails.

what have I done to myself

frozen in the estuary

what have I done to myself

snow on the deck

board split in half

accolade to the darkness

(The light bulb interrupts the blue and white flame of the porcelain, and its reflex on the contour of the stalactites in the underwater cavern carries us without resistance to a lunar shortcut where the phosphorescent moss on the tree trunk touches our skin as velvet in an oboe concert from glacier landings. Fate of brief annotation in the margins of a diary that nobody read, red vagabond in Carrara marble. An acrobat sleeps on a dromedary, and an ebony piano uninterruptedly writes our names on the sea.)

Between the silence and the trauma

of who wanted everything

nothing is expected any longer

allow me to conduct

allow me to drown

and I will not ask for anything else

from the crazy dream

that so much permitted me to fly

surrounded by unicorns I sit on the edge of the water

in the exasperating lethargy of holidays

and the shade of forgetfulness on the white horse

is the transparency of automatons in a night of masks

colorful bead on the silver thimble

Venetian mirror on the Arabian cushion

Venetian mirror with Murano glass

there will be victory if I cross the water.

to see you again

because now it all seems too late

to see you again

and erase the fury of the minotaur from the labyrinth

to see you again

your face still intangible in the blankness of language

what have I done to myself

frozen in the estuary

what have I done to myself

snow on the deck

what have I done to myself

Venetian mirror

what have I done to myself

Murano frame

red vagabond in Carrara marble

brief annotation in the margins of a diary

that nobody read

and I thought the poems were dead

because in truth we are never nothing

the wet hair, we cannot take it any longer.

CHRISTMAS IN MONTPARNASSE

The enormous oval moon pours on our heads

The dark morning with an obscure force

I do not know the motive as to why we enter with no motive

This gigantic painting by Salvador Dalí

You and I drained in this car that paralyzes us

Highlighted are the twisted cigarettes

Please do something

Freeze our image with the remote control

It is a pity that this film will have to end

But you silently sleep in the nearby wagon

And a glass of wine does not stain the valley of Loire with blood

Misty glass inexact and sliding landscape

This is the moment in which I wish I could stay

I do not have e-mails and I do not answer letters

And a completely motionless train distances

The Christmas songs in Montparnasse

THE MOTION OF ROPES IN TUGS

The motion of ropes in tugs

European hour of a mists’ kaleidoscope

fingers like submarines in the midst of seaweed

it is not so far

from Babylonia to Jerusalem

City quay of Saint-Nazaire

the moor and set sail of ships

slow movement in motionless water

indefinite horizon in Loire

verandah between scaffolds and cranes

unexpected ecstasy of embarkations

Here I am only a foreigner

and I bring the mark of casualty

I am an outsider passer-by

and as I arrived I should leave

Here I am only a passenger

and no matter how devoted I am

I will remain an outsider

No matter how much I want you

I am farouche

and this city is only in my route

ditch wall bridge and sentinel

as I arrived I should return

Nobody will wave to me

from any window

when I leave

platonic quay of myself

metaphysical dimension of a dream

metaphor quay of the passport body

we are the ships in this night

invisible quay of resurrection.

VÖLVA I

I want the empty shelves of the dictatorship of the books

I stanza exiled in a Viking dictionary

I solitary theatre of metaphor in ruin

I clandestine angel father of Christ and João Batista

I can dislocate matter with psychic energy

I insanity in a fixated shape on the red wine glass

real life is this chance placed in view of destiny

to be alive is to surrender to the position of fortune-teller

our diva is sleeping and missing Bolivia

her taste of aniseed/cinnamon and clove/sugar/ginger

I early morning bird flying over gallows

I sacred Völva shaking paths

I protected statue of unknown gods

I diva who fell asleep while waiting in vain for the vampires

covered by an Egyptian sheet made of silk and cotton

majesty of the abandoned trapeze in the circus

I pain of the queen Urraca who was betrayed by her own son

anonymous like the women in old friendship ballads

LUCIDOR II

He took my hand and told me in a rare language:

since the 18th century I have waited for you

standing on the deck of the ship

amid the sun and the rain death and life

under the panting discourse of the ocean

I waited for you

In hotels’ rooms of train stations

Wanting nothing else of the world

I waited for you

eyes became grey of so many tears

thinking that we have been abandoned for long

and that no power could reunite us any longer

I knew how to be life, pages of a closed book

where letters are put out and lit up in code

and that the pine trees that seem dead are reborn

shiny

because that which is going to die always protects

that which resists and will survive

however everything that is strange also seems

familiar to me

because we carry the entire present and past

inside of us

like oysters that secretly carry pearls in the

deep sea

 LOSE CONTROL

I believe that my dreams are revelations

but I will keep the secret of the miracle from mediocrity

because everything was expectation and huge trepidation

some day I will return covered in seaweed to the grave in the

aquarium

giving you an impression of eternity

this poem is the metaphor of death

my corpse, baroque, in the avenue

surrounded by the living passers-by

reminisce of things lost in old circular patios

Balder’s dream

Odin suspended in a tree for nine nights

but paganism did not have missionaries

nor martyrs

do remember the Scandinavian Visigoths with their

magical fables

and because you do not know anything any longer it is necessary

that I shout in this afternoon

lose control

be as passionate as Nordic gods

dive into canals

go wild under bridges

get intoxicated

and re-emerge wet and wild

dancing completely nude in the centennial streets

because as far as one goes in freedom

there is no come back

lose control

THE COUNTRY OF BERGMAN

I wish this poem had the density of your dream

and were as concrete as the infant Bergman in Uppsala

where he learned about people’s inability

for family intimacy

I wish my verses translated the consolation

of anguish shut in itself

and the absence of love that lead us to poetry and

to cinema as an obsession

with the sudden blast of kept truths

silently in the lost memory

I wish our parents had held us with

greater tenderness

and perhaps we would receive smoothly the harsh

command of the social machine

with a quicker recovery in view of the cruelty

of emotional illiterates

the light which I see beyond the windowpane is the path of the sun

filtered by the vegetation

children swing outside their homes

like pendulums attracted by the clouds

and we know as we look at the flowers in the grass that heaven

and hell are only inside of us

Wild Strawberries/Shouts and Whispers/Autumn

Sonata/The Seventh Seal

grandiose in view of the misery around us was your

emphasis on human interiority

and in your country I write these words that

want to be images of our souls

(Translated by Marina Nogueira Martensson)

CANTIGA DE AMIGO OR NEXT TO GARAGEM BAR THERE WAS A VAN GOGH BRIDGE 

CANTIGA DE AMIGO I  OR NEXT TO GARAGEM BAR THERE WAS A VAN GOGH BRIDGE yesterday I wanted to surrender to joy and almost randomly I went out with my huge red Madame Butterfly hand fan and after I sang the beginning of Summertime on the microphone I was taken to a place that for a long time I’ve wanted to go and by the time I got there in the darkness of the sound an almost 2 meters tall faun yelled my name and we danced twist down to the floor in this luxury-free bar that looked like the ones I went to in Colombia after that another satyr came by who still didn’t know me and perhaps for that reason invited me to go upstairs and I confided his proposal to a friend of mine with irony but my friend did not understand what I was saying and wanted to go upstairs before I did to look around and then he got back saying that it was just a sofa camping and that was when on the sidewalk I don’t know why I was introduced to a version of Tadzio de Visconti in a completely tropical Venice I was just a former collector in front of a screen attached to the Louvre museum when someone threw a drink over the skin that exalted life from about five meters away with the fatal aim of Robin Hood and Tadzio was like the idol of that sudden underground Eden and soon guardians came to attack the foolish aggressor who wore a blue shirt I positioned Joan of Arc at the center of Ernesto Sábato’s tunnel and everything was calm in the corner of a bar late on a Saturday night the heaven sheltered a drunk moon on the Panther pattern of the necklace and on the transparent voile that made the Valkyrie fly I was reminded of Sala de Reboco when the Stockholm adventurer suddenly seemed to want to go down to the quiet river by the shore weaving boulevards filled with plants and gardens that we stared at while we stood and missed the cup of the Graal I got home with the morning light on my eyes and on the hem of my tunic and an amulet was made out of the dreams of the seven druids to remind us that next to Garagem bar there was a Van Gogh bridge

YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE

you don’t know where you are stand-by sacred aluminum simulacrum stand-by dry ice in the God effect ex-machine stand-by drunk and stoned he crosses the street listening to the portable radio stand-by how many people died in wars today, tell me stand-by the candles are lit in the pubs of Stockholm stand-by then he hugged me and said I was awesome in the midst of that legion of absurd shadows