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Ana Luisa Amaral

TOPOGRAFIAS EM QUASE DICIONÁRIO

  • 1 O EXCESSO MAIS PERFEITO | Translations: de
  • 2 UM POUCO SÓ DE GOYA: CARTA A MINHA FILHA: | Translations: en
  • 3 UMA BOTÂNICA DA PAZ: VISITAÇÃO | Translations: ende
  • 4 LUGARES COMUNS | Translations: de
  • 5 UNIFICAÇÕES
  • 6 A GÉNESE DO AMOR
  • 7 PASSADO | Translations: de
  • 8 EM SIMULACRO: OS ANJOS | Translations: de
  • 9 QUE ESCADA DE JACOB? | Translations: de
  • 10 TOPOGRAFIAS EM QUASE DICIONÁRIO | Translations: en
Language: portuguese
Translations: english (Topographies almost as a dictionary)
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TOPOGRAFIAS EM QUASE DICIONÁRIO

Reaprender o mundo
em prisma novo:
pequena bátega de sol a resolver-se
em cisne,
sereia harmonizando o universo

Só o vento sucumbe
à demais luz,
e só o vento,
como alaúde azul,
repete devagar os mesmos sons:

Não interessa onde estou,
não me faz falta um mapa
de viagem

Os teus dedos traçaram
ligeiríssima rota no meu corpo
e a curva topográfica
sem tempo
aí ficou, como sorriso, ou foz
de um rio sem nome

Não interessa onde estou:
esta linha de abetos ou pinheiros
que em declive se estende, branda,
leve, e se debruça em mar,
pode ser tudo

Pode mesmo ir buscar o cisne
ao verso acima
e colocá-lo aqui, sobre este verso,
agora,
ou desorganizar um terço
da sereia e transformá-la
em ilha resumida
de uma paz qualquer

Não interessa onde
estou

Diz-se que os gregos
tinham cinco formas para falar
de amor.
Nós temos uma só, onde não cabe
o quase paradoxo
de que amor é tudo o que dele sabemos.
Nada mais
Era bom ter no verso
as formas todas, essas palavras todas
sempre à mão: pequeno dicionário
que soubesse de paisagens
de dentro

Não resistir ao tempo

Não sei se os gregos tinham várias
formas para falar da morte,
nem mesmo sei se o amor
foi buscar alguma dessas formas
para se definir

Há literatura que fala do que está
a montante do amor,
mas não lhe está — eros, tanatos,
a sua ligação, o seu estar-entre-
estar

Mas tudo o que se sabe
repete-se em trajecto de sereia,
enigma de sereia
transmutada em cisne

Diz-se que só na morte
o cisne canta.
Mas é preciso organizar o vento
de forma a que o seu passo
seja mais que azul

Peço ao vento algum som,
alguma imagem
que seja tão brilhante e deslumbrada
como estas que aqui estão
à minha frente

Mas não responde o vento,
implausível que é o seu falar

A rota que traçaste permanece,
embora, e o corpo

reconhece-lhe o toque
desses dedos

Onde fica o que está descrito
em verso
no meio de tudo isto?

Onde se escondem as palavras
todas?
Sei que preciso de uma forma nova,
que precisava de palavra nova
para a moldura, ou cor

Era essa aprendizagem
de um olhar
que me faltava agora

— sobra somente o sol
iluminando o sítio onde é inútil
o mapa de viagem
Tudo o resto: inventado
há mais de três mil anos,
por entre templos, degraus onde, sentados:
discípulos de ausente obediência

Recorro ao alaúde,
— mas só o verso fala
e me responde

Traços rimados, círculos
em fogo, fragmentos com que inundam
as palavras já escritas

Colo nelas o selo deste mar
e sonho que são estas as palavras.
Nesta manhã de sol,
olho-as assim,
sabendo-as de algum tempo,
quase templos sagrados em que pinto

o dia a cores,
que nem herdadas de mil gerações
Numa tradição nula de viagem,
são o único ponto
a resistir

Tudo o resto: invenção
mais que plasmada,
multiplicados séculos
por cem

Mais de quatro mil anos
sobre o tempo novo,
e nada novo abaixo
deste sol

Talvez só este
abismo.
Interrompo no mapa

o precipício?

No traço dos teus dedos,
rota onde quase cabem: sereia,
o alaúde, o tempo,
nessa rota
— o suspendo

© Ana Luisa Amaral
From: A Génese do Amor
Audio production: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin 2008

Translations:

Language: english

Topographies almost as a dictionary

Re-learn the world
anew:
brief burst of sun revealed
in a swan,
a mermaid harmonising the universe
 
Only the wind succumbs
to the excess of light,
and only the wind,
a lute in blue,
slowly repeats the same sound:
 
It doesn't matter where I am
I don't need a traveller's
map
 
Your fingers marked
the subtlest route over my body
and their timeless
topographic curve
stayed there, like a smile, or the mouth
of a nameless river
 
It doesn't matter where I am:
this line of firs or pine trees
sloping softly,
lightly, towards the sea,
can be everything
 
It can even bring the swan
from the line above
and place it here, on this one,
now,
or disorganise one third
of the mermaid and turn her
into an island infused
with whatever peace
 
It doesn't matter where
I am
 
They say the Greeks
knew five ways to talk
of love.
We only know one, which cannot contain
the near paradox
of love being all we know of love
and nothing else
 
It would be good to have, in the verse,
all those ways, all those words
close at hand: a brief dictionary
that might know all inner
landscapes
 
Not to resist time
 
I don’t know if the Greeks had several
ways to talk of death,
or even if love
has borrowed some of those ways
for its self-definition
 
There is literature that speaks of what is
upstream from love,
but it's not - eros, thanatos,
their connection, their being-between-
being
 
But all that is known
is repeated in the path of the mermaid,
her enigma
transfigured into the swan
 
They say the swan only sings
when it's dying.
But we need to organise the wind
so as to paint its speed
in a deeper blue
 
I ask the wind for a sound
an image
as bright and dazzled
as the ones I have
in front of me
 
No answer from the wind though,
implausible that it should speak
 
The route you marked remains,
however, and my body
recognises the touch
of your fingers
 
Where is that which is depicted
in verse,
in the midst of all this?
 
Where are all the words
hiding?
I know I need a new way,
a new word
for the frame, or the colour
 
learning through  
seeing is
what I'm missing now
 
- only the sun is left,
shedding light on the very spot
where a traveller's map is useless
All else: invented
more than three thousand years
ago, among temples and stairways where
disobedient disciples sat
 
I resort to the lute,
- but only the verse speaks,
answering me
 
Rhyming lines, fiery
circles, fragments inundating
already written words
 
I stamp this sea, on all of them
and dream these are the words.
In the morning of this sun,
I see them thus,
knowing them for the time they hold,
almost sacred temples where I paint
the day in colours,
inherited from a thousand generations
 
In tradition of no travel,
they are the only
point of resistance
 
Everything else: an invention,
moulded and remoulded,
centuries multiplied a hundred
times
 
More than four thousand years
into this new era,
and nothing is new under
this sun
 
Perhaps only this
abyss.
 
On the map, do I disrupt
the precipice?
 
The trace of your fingers,
a route that nearly harbours mermaid,
lute, time,
on this route
- I suspend it

© Translation by Ana Hudson, 2009
Published with permission of 'Poems from the Portuguese' website
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Ana Luisa Amaral

photo © gezett.de
* 05.04.1956, Portugal
lives in: Matosinhos, Portugal

Ana Luísa Amaral was born in 1956 and now teaches English literature at the University of Porto. Plays have been made around her poems and her books for children (O Olhar Diagonal das Coisas, Assédio, 2008; A História da Aranha Leopoldina, Assédio / Teatro do Campo Alegre, 2009).

She has books published in France and in Brazil, and will soon be published in Italy and Sweden.

                                                                                                 
 photo © gezett.de
Publications
  • Minha Senhora de Quê

    Lisboa: Quetzal, 1990

  • Coisas de Partir

    Lisboa: Gótica, 1993

  • Epopeias

    Coimbra: Fora do Texto, 1994

  • E Muitos os Caminhos

    Porto: Poetas de Letras, 1995

  • Às Vezes o Paraíso

    Lisboa: Quetzal, 1998

  • Gaspar, o Dedo Diferente e Outras Histórias

    Porto: Campo das Letras, 1999

  • Imagens

    Porto: Campo das Letras, 2000

  • A História da Aranha Leopoldina

    Porto: Campo das Letras, 2000

  • Imagias

    Lisboa: Gótica, 2001

  • A Arte de Ser Tigre

    Lisboa: Gótica, 2003

  • A Génese do Amor

    Porto: Campo das Letras, 2005

  • Poesia Reunida (1990-2005)

    Famalicão: Quási, 2005

  • Entre Dois Rios e Outras Noites

    Porto: Campo das Letras, 2007

  • Se Fosse um Intervalo

    Lisboa: Dom Quixote, forthcoming

Awards
  • 2007 Premio de Poesia Giuseppe Acerbi

  • 2007 Prémio Correntes D’Escritas / Casino da Póvoa

  • 2008 Grande Prémio de Poesia

Links
  • Ana Luísa Amaral @ Poems from the Portuguese

    21st Century Portuguese Poetry translated into English

    Website (en)
  • Ana Luísa Amaral @ Poetry International Web

    Website (en)

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