VINICIUS DE MORAES
(b. 1913) studied law at the University of Brazil and English Literature at Oxford University in England. He became a diplomat in 1943, and served in Los Angeles, París, and Montevideo. He has transponed the lyricism characteristic of his poetry into popular music, and today is considered to be "the Pope of Bossa Nova." He is aiso interested in the cinema, and wrote the script for Marcel Camus's film Black Orpheus.
A PERA
Como de cera
E por acaso
Fria no vaso
A entardecer
A pera é um pomo
Em holocausto
À vida, como
Um seio exausto
Entre bananas
Supervenientes
E maçãs lhanas
Rubras, contentes
A pobre pera:
Quem manda ser a?
THE PEAR
Translated by Ashley Brown
As if of wax
And by chance
Cold in the dish
Growing late
The pear is a fruit
Burnt offering
To life, like
A breast exhausted
Among bananas
Extraneous
And apples, candid
Ruddy, content
The poor pear:
Who brings it to be?
SONETO DE FIDELIDADE
De tudo, ao meu amor serei atento
Antes, e com tal zelo, e sempre, e tanto
Que mesmo em face do maior encanto
Dele se encante mais meu pensamento.
Quero vivê-lo em cada vão momento
E em seu louvor hei de espalhar meu canto
E rir meu riso e derramar meu pranto
Ao seu pesar ou seu contentamento.
E assim, quando mais tarde me procure
Quem sabe a morte, angustia de quem vive
Quem sabe a solidão, fim de quem ama
Eu possa me dizer do amor (que tive):
Que não seja imortal, posto que é chama
Mas que seja infinito enquanto dure.
SONNET ON FIDELITY
Translated by Ashley Brown
Above all, to my love I'11 be attentive
First, and always with such ardor, so much
That even when confronted by this great
Enchantment my thoughts ascend to more delight.
I want to live it through in each vain moment
And in its honor I must spread my song
And laugh with my delight and shed my tears
When she is sad or when she is contented.
And thus, when afterward comes looking for me
Who knows what death, anxiety of the living,
Who knows what loneliness, end of the loving
I could say to myself of the love (I had):
Let it not be immortal, since it is flame
But let it be infinite while it lasts.
SONETO DE SEPARAÇÃO
De repente do riso fez-se o pranto
Silencioso e branco como a bruma
E das bocas unidas fez-se a espuma
E das mãos espalmadas fez-se o espanto.
De repente da calma fez-se o vento
Que dos olhos desfez a última chama
E da paixão fez-se o pressentimento
E do momento imóvel fez-se o drama.
De repente, não mais que de repente
Fez-se de triste o que se fez amante
E de sozinho o que se fez contente
Fez-se do amigo próximo o distante
Fez-se da vida uma aventura errante
De repente, não mais que de repente.
SONNET ON SEPARATION
Translated by Ashley Brown
Suddenly laughter became sobbing
Silent and white like the mist
And united mouths became foam
And upturned hands became astonished.
Suddenly the calm became the wind
That extinguished the last flame in the eye
And passion became foreboding
And the still moment became drama.
Suddenly, no more than suddenly
He who'd become a lover became sad
And he who'd become content became lon
The near became the distant friend
Life became a vagrant venture
Suddenly, no more than suddenly.
CANÇÃO
Não leves nunca de mim
A filha que tu me deste
A doce, úmida, tranquila
Filhinha que tu me deste
Deixa-a, que bem me persiga
Seu balbucio celeste.
Não leves; deixa-a comigo
Que bem me persiga, a fim
De que eu não queira comigo
A primogênita em mim
A fria, seca, encruada
Filha que a morte me deu
Que vive dessedentada
Do leite que não é seu
E que de noite me chama
Com a voz mais triste que há
E pra dizer que me ama
E pra chamar-me de pai.
Não deixes nunca partir
A filha que tu me deste
A fim de que eu não prefira
A outra, que é mais agreste
Mas que não parte de mim.
SONG
Translated by Richard Wilbur
Never take her away,
The daughter whom you gave me,
The gentle, moist, untroubled
Small daughter whom you gave me;
O let her heavenly babbling
Beset me and enslave me.
Don't take her; let her stay,
Beset my heart, and win me,
That I may put away
The firstborn child within me,
That cold, petrific, dry
Daughter whom death once gave,
Whose life is a long cry
For milk she may not have,
And who, in the night-time, calls me
In the saddest voice that can be
Father, Father, and tells me
Of the love she feels for me.
Don't let her go away,
Her whom you gave — my daughter —
Lest I should come to favor
That wilder one, that other
Who does not leave me ever.
From
MODERN BRAZILIAN POETRY; AN ANTHOLOGY
translated and edited, with the help of Yolanda Leite, by
JOHN NIST
Bloominghton: Indiana University Press,, 1962
Imitation of Rilke
Someone who is watching me from the depth of night
With motionless eyes shining in the night
Wants me.
Someone who is watching me from the depth of night
(A woman who loves me, lost in the night?)
Calls me.
Someone who is watching me from the depth of night
(Is it you, Poetry, holding a vigil in the night?)
Wants me.
Someone who is watching me from the depth of night
(Death also comes from the solitudes of night... )
Who is it?
Longing for Manuel Bandeira
You were not merely a secret
Of poetry and of emotion:
You were a star in my exile—
Poet, father! stern brother.
You not only took me to your bosom,
But you also gave me your hand:
I, very small—you, elect
Poet! father, stern brother.
Clear, tall and ascetic friend
Of the sad and pure heart:
What do you dream so much all by yourself—
Poet, father, stern brother?
The Acrobats
Let us go up!
Go up higher
Go up beyond, go up
Above beyond, let us go up!
With the physical possession of our arms
We will inexorably climb
The great oceans of stars
Through thousands of years of light.
Let us go up!
Like two acrobats
Our faces petrified
In the faint smile of effort
Let us go up farther
With the physical possession of our arms
And the measureless muscles
In the convulsive calm of ascension.
Oh, higher
Farther than everything
Beyond, farther than above beyond!
Like two acrobats
Let us go up, very slowly
There where infinity
Is so infinite
That it has not even a name
Let us go up!
Tense
By the luminous rope
Which hangs invisible
And whose knots are stars
Burning our hands
Let us rise to the surface
Of the huge ocean of stars
Where night sleeps
Let us go up!
You and I, hermetic
Our buttocks taut
Our carotid knotted
In the neck fiber
Our sharp feet pointing
As in spasm.
And when,
Above, there
Beyond, farther than over beyond
Farther than Betelgeuse's veil
After Altair's country
On God's brain
In a last impetus
Freed from the spirit
Stripped from the flesh
We shall possess one another.
And we shall die
We shall die high, immensely
IMMENSELY HIGH.
AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN BRAZILIAN POETRY. Verse translations by Leonard S. Downes. [São Paulo]: Clube de Poesia do Brasil, 1954. 84 p. 14x20 cm. “ Leonard S. Downes “ Ex. Biblioteca Nacional de Brasília.
DEATH-BED
In your immense "white body there I stayed.
Your eyes were livid and I -was full oif fear.
Already you had lost your shadows — like a great
[desert of sand
Where I had fallen after an endless, nightless march.
In my anguish I sought the peaceful landscape
You had for so long given me
But all was barren, monstrous, lifeless
And your breasts like dunes tfne wind had swept away.
Dying, I tremlbled, tried to rise
But your body Was as quick-sand to my hands.
I would lie still and pray but I was drowning, drowned
[in you,
Dragged down unto your disintegrated self, which closes
[like the whirlpool over me.
Afterwards came sleep, darkness and death.
When I awoke it was already day and I was newly born
New-born Sn fear foam out your womb.
POESIA SEMPRE. Revista da Biblioteca Nacional do RJ. Ano 1 – Número 2 – Julho 1993. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Biblioteca Nacional / Ministério da Cultura – Departamento Nacional do Livro. ISSN 0104-0626m Ex. bibl. Antonio Miranda
Sonnet of intimacy
Farm afternoons, there's much too much blue air.
I go out sometimes, follow the pasture track,
Chewing a blade of sticky grass, chest bare,
In threadbare pajamas of three summers back,
To the little rivulets in the river-bed
For a drink of water, cold and musical.
And if I spot in the brush a glow of red,
A raspberry, spit its blood at the corral.
The smell of cow manure is delicious.
The cattle look at me unenviously
And when there comes a sudden stream and hiss
Accompanied by a look not unmalicious,
All of us, animals, unemotionally
Partake together of a pleasant piss.
Translated by Elizabeth Bishop
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