FERREIRA GULLAR
Was born in São Luis do Maranhão in 1930, and He hás lived in Rio de Janeiro since 1951. Poet, journalist and art critic.
TEXTOS EM PORTUGUÊS / TEXTS IN ENGLISH
O TRABALHO DAS NUVENS
Esta varanda fica
à margem
da tarde. Onde nuvens trabalham.
A cadeira não é tão seca
e lúcida, como
o coração.
Só à margem da tarde
é que se conhece
a tarde: que são as
folhas de verde e vento, e
o cacarejar da galinha e as
casas sob um céu: isso. diante
de olhos.
E os frutos?
e também os
frutos. Cujo crescer altera
a verdade e a cor
dos céus. Sim, os frutos
que não comeremos, também
fazem a tarde.
(a vossa
tarde, de que estou à margem)
Há, porém, a tarde
do fruto. Essa
não roubaremos:
tarde
em que ele se propõe à gloria de
não mais ser fruto, sendo-o
mais: de esplender, não como astro, mas
como fruto que esplende.
E a tarde futura onde ele
arderá como um facho
efêmero!
Em verdade, é desconcertante para
os homens o
trabalho das nuvens.
Elas não trabalham
acima das cidades: quando
há nuvens não há
cidades: as nuvens ignoram
se deslizam por sobre
nossa cabeça: nós é que sabemos que
deslizamos sob elas: as
nuvens cintilam, mas não é para
o coração dos homens.
A tarde é
as folhas esperarem amarelecer
e nós o observarmos.
E o mais é o pássaro branco que
voa — e que só porque voa e o vemos,
voa para vermos. O pássaro que é
branco,
não porque ele o queira nem
porque o neccessitemos: o pás-
saro que é branco
porque é branco.
Que te resta, pois, senãu
aceitar?
Por ti e pelo
pássaro pássaro.
===================================================================
CLOUDS' WORK
Translated by Paul Blackburn
This verandah is fixed
at the edge
of the afternoon. Where clouds work.
The chair is nowhere as dry
& lucid as
the heart.
Only at the edge
of the afternoon one knows the
afternoon: green leaves & wind, &
chickens cluck, the
houses under the sky: what's
in front of the eye.
And fruits?
& also the
fruits. They grow & modify
the truth
the color
of the skies. Yes, the fruits
we'11 never eat, they too'll
make the afternoon.
(your afternoon
wherein I am put aside)
There's still, however, the after-
noon of the fruit. This
we shan't steal:
afternoon
when he makes up his mind
to be. what glory. no more a fruit,
being it even more: shining, no star but
a fruit that shines. & the next afternoon
Clouds' work. in fact, it's
embarrassing for men. Clouds
don't work over cities: when
there are clouds, there aren't
cities: the clouds don't know
they slide along above
our heads: it's we who know we
slide under them: the clouds
shine,
but not for men's hearts.
The afternoon
is leaves waiting to turn
& we watch them.
The whole rest of it is that bird flying
— and just because he flies & we see him, he
flies so we can see him. The bird, that
white,
not because it wants to be, or because
we need it, white: the bird
that's white
because it's white.
Accept it — what
choices have you left, you
or the bird bird?
Extraídos de
AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN POETRY. Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1972.
==============================================================
Translated by Richard Zenith
Richard Zenith's versions of poems by Ferreira Gullar have appeared in
Brazilian Poetry 1950-1980 (Wesleyan University Press, 19S3), APR, The
American Voice and elsewhere.
Happiness
Suffering is the divine way
to nothing.
It won't make a halo
around your head, it won't
illuminate the smallest
square of your dark flesh,
it won't even illuminate
the remembrance or illusion
at happiness.
you suffer, a wounded dog
suffers, an insect poisoned
by blackflag suffers.
Is your pain superior
to that of the cat you saw
with the broken back
limping along in the gutter
howling and unable to die?
Justice is moral, injustice
indifferent. Pain
will guarantee you equality
with rats and roaches that also
glimpse from inside their drains
the sun
and in their repulsive bodies
dragging through faeces
wish to be happy.
Disaster
Some wish
their poem to be
marble
or crystal. I wanted
mine to be a peach
or pear
or banana rotting on a plate
preferably
on a verandah
where people talk and work
and can hear
the noise from the street.
My only ambition
is the rotten poem
the pulp wounded
exposed
the voice deep within
festering
on the plate
the liquor the chemistry
of syllables
the decaying corpse
of metaphors
a poem
like a disaster in progress.
Lesson
Even as you once were open to happiness
open up now to suffering
its fruit
and ardent counterpart.
Even as
you went to the heart
of happiness
lost yourself in it
and in that loss
found yourself
now let sorrow do its work
without lies
without excuses
evaporating in your flesh
every illusion
for life only consumes
what sustains it.
Exile
In a house in Ipanema surrounded by trees and birds
in the hot shade of afternoon
among familiar furniture
in the hot shade of afternoon
among trees and birds
among familiar odours
they live their lives
they live my life
in the shade of a hot afternoon
in the shadow of a hot afternoon
From: MODERN POETRY IN TRANSLATION. New Series / No. 6 / Winter 1994-95. Special Feature: Modern Poetry from Brazil. Published by King´s College London.
University of London. Edited by Daniel Weissbort
***
Coisas da Terra
Todas as coisas de que falo estão na cidade
entre o céu e a terra.
São todas elas coisas perecíveis
e eternas como teu riso
a palavra solidária
minha mão aberta
ou este esquecido cheiro de cabelo
que volta
e acende sua flama inesperada
no coração de maio.
Todas as coisas de que falo são de carne
como o vento e o salário.
Mortalmente inseridas no tempo,
estão dispersas como o ar
no mercado, nas oficinas,
nas ruas, nos hotéis de viagem.
São coisas, todas elas,
cotidianas, como bocas
e mãos, sonhos, greves,
denúncias,
acidentes do trabalho e do amor. Coisas,
de que falam os jornais
às vezes tão rudes
às vezes tão escuras
que mesmo a poesia as ilumina com dificuldade.
Mas é nelas que te vejo pulsando,
mundo novo,
ainda em estado de soluços e esperança.
Agosto 1964
Entre as lojas de flores e de sapatos, bares,
mercados, butiques.
viajo,
num ônibus Estrada de Ferro-Leblon.
Volto do trabalho, a noite em meio
fatigado de mentiras.
O ônibus sacoleja. Adeus, Rimbaud,
relógio de lilases, concretismo,
neoconcretismo, ficções da juventude, adeus,
que a vida
eu a compro à vista aos donos do mundo.
Ao peso dos impostos, o verso sufoca,
a poesia agora responde a inquérito policial-militar.
Digo adeus à ilusão
mas não ao mundo. Mas não à vida,
meu reduto e meu reino.
Do salário injustos,
da punição injusta,
da humilhação, da tortura,.
do terror,
retiramos algo e com ele construímos um artefato
um poema
uma bandeira
Bananas Podres
Como um relógio de ouro o podre
oculto nas frutas
sobre o balcão (ainda mel
dentro da casca
na carne que se faz água)_era
ainda ouro
o turvo açúcar
vindo do chão
e agora
as bananas negras
como bolsas moles
onde pousa uma abelha
e gira
e gira ponteiro no universo dourado
parte mínima da tarde)
em abril
enquanto vivemos.
Subersiva
A poesia
quando chega
não respeita nada
Nem pai nem mãe.
Quando ela chega
de qualquer de seus abismos
desconhece o Estado e a Sociedade Civil
desrespeita o Código de Águas
relincha
como puta
nova
em frente ao Palácio da Alvorada.
E só depois
reconsidera beija
nos olhos os que ganham mal
embala no colo
os que têm sede de felicidade
e de justiça
E promete incendiar o país
***
Translated by William Jay Smith
Things of the Earth
All the things I speak of lie in the city
between heaven and earths.
All are things perishable
and eternal like your laughter
words o allegiance
my open hand
or the forgotten smell of hair
that returns
and kindles a sudden flame
in the hear of May.
All the things I speak of are of the flesh
like summer and salary..
Mortally inserted into time
dispersed like air
in the marketplace, in offices,
streets an hostelries.
They are things, all of them,
quotidian things, like mouths
and hands, dreams, strikes,
denunciations —
accidents of works or love. Things
talked about in the newspapers
at times so crude
all times so dark
that even poetry illuminates them with difficulty.
But in them I see you, new world,
pulsating,
still sobbing, still hopeful
August 1964
Past flowershops and shoestores, bars,
markets, boutiques,
I ride
in a Ferro-Leblon bus.
I´m returning from work, late at night,
tired of lies.
The buss jerks forward. Farewell, Rimbaud,
lilac clock, concretism,
neoconcretism, fictions of youth, farewell,
for I must pay cash
to buy life from the world´s propietors.
Verse is suffocating under the weight of taxes,
and poetry is subject to a secret-police inquiry.
I say farewell to illusion
but not to the world, not to life,
my redoubt and my kingdom.
From unjust wages,
from injust punishment,
from humiliation, from torture,
from terror,
we take something and from it construct an artifact
a poem
a banner
Rotten Bananas
Like a gold watch the blight
hidden in the fruits
on the counter (still honey
under the skin
in the pulp which will turn to water) was
still golden
muddy sugar
from de ground
and now
look: black bananas
like soft bags
where a bee hovers
and spins
a watch hand spinning in the golden universe
in April
while we live our lives.
Subversive
Poetry
when she comes
respects nothing.
Neither father nor mother.
When she struggles
up from one of her abysses
she ignores Society and the State
disdains Water Regulations
hee-haws
like a young
whore
in front of the Palace of Dawn*
And only later
does she reconsider kisses
the eyes of those who earn little
gathers into her arms
those who thirst for happiness
and justice
And promises to se the country on tire
*the presidential palace in Brasília.
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BRAZILIAN POETRY 1950-1980. Edited by Emanuel Brasil and William Jay Smith. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1983. 187 p. Ex. bibl. Antonio Miranda
*
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