Two by
João Luís Barreto Guimarães
/ in translation by Calvin Olsen
Pétalas sobre a cabeça
Cada dia
pela manhã cruzamos o pátio da escola já
as pétalas de camélia são
esboroadas
pelo chão. Toda a vez as transportamos
(cálidas e inocentes)
atrasadas sob um arco onde tudo é
já passado
(dedos levando-me a mão pela arte
do crescimento)
meus ossos a querer ficar efebos
naquele instante. Não tardará chegaremos
a tempo de as ver cair. Então
não serei eu
a seu lado.
Petals overhead
Every morning
we cross the schoolyard and already
the camellia petals have
crumbled
on the ground. Every time we carry them
(pleasant and innocent)
slowly under an arch where everything
belongs to the past
(fingers leading me by the hand through the art
of growing older)
my bones hoping to stay boyish
in that moment. Before long we’ll arrive
in time to see them fall. By then
it won’t be me
by her side.
Escrevendo «Pétalas sobre a cabeça»
«Nota que
não foi preciso procurar o poema
oferecido como luz à
visão das pétalas
pelo chão. Porque insistiu em fazer-se
(de
tradição e ofício) como se
já lá estivesse na urgência de
ser nítido (a
aresta de um verso de fora) à
míngua de
ser subjectivo.»
Writing “Petals Overhead”
“Note the way
it wasn’t necessary to chase the poem
it was offered up like light shining on
the image of petals
on the ground. It insisted on composing itself
(from
tradition and technique) as if
it was already waiting there desperate
for clarity (toeing
the final precipice of a line)
for want of
subjectivity.”
João Luís Barreto Guimarães is the author of 11 volumes of poetry since 1989, including Mediterrâneo (2016) which in the English translation, Mediterranean, by Calvin Olsen, won the Willow Run Poetry Award 2020. Other English translations have appeared in Poetry London, Asymptote, Salamander, Tupelo Quarterly, The London Magazine, The Columbia Review and LIT Magazine, among others. João Luís Barreto Guimarães is online at joaoluisbarretoguimaraes.blogspot.com.
Calvin Olsen is an American poet and translator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where he studied under Robert Pinsky, David Ferry, and Nobel laureate Louise Glück, and an MA in English & Comparative Literature from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and he is currently a doctoral candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media at NC State University. Calvin’s poetry and translations have appeared in The Adroit Journal, AGNI, Asymptote and The London Magazine, among many others. He is the recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and a 2021 Travel Fellowship from The American Literary Translators Association. More of his work can be found at calvin-olsen.com.