Manuel Gusmão ( ) Portugal

For A Moment I Feel Your Black face

It is in the night of the morning
You get up
Morning and night do not see
each other in the front of a mirror,
but always miss each other endlessly

But they hear each other in the rooms of the house

You are suddenly in the corridor-corner
for a moment I feel your black face
and the vastness of your nocturnal body


You pass me the morning slowly,
hand to hand,
like a phosphorescent-map

where surely we will die


*****

É isto: a noite de manhã
Tu levantas-te

Manhã e noite não se vêem ao espelho
antes o estilhaçam para dentro
desencontram-se interminavelmente

mas ouvem-se uma à outra entre as salas da casa

Tu estás súbita ali na esquina do corredor
sinto por momentos a tua cara negra
e a imensidão do teu corpo anoitecido

passas-me a manhã devagar
de mão a mão
como um mapa fosforescente

onde por certo íamos morrer

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Then you’ll speak of passions

Learn to speak—
says a rose:
write at night
with my multiple suns
guiding you down countless paths.
Sit in a room with the light out
and wait for another light,
fragile,
to arrive from another room
at the paper you turn its way.
Then you’ll speak of passions
and of the petal that falls
into the heart and sails,
in the shadow of the blood,
passing many wonders.

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We will die repeatedly

We will die repeatedly
on this beach,
along the shores of light.
Its life story the rose declines
falling obliquely...
Over miles and miles
of prevailing forests,
over shadowy structures
of this earth in love,
over the rose, rising
to the airy metallic-clouds,
we will die repeatedly…

***

morreremos repetidamente sobre esta praia, nas margens da luz.
A rosa declina a sua autobiografia, obliquamente caindo
sobre quilómetros e quilómetros de florestas insistentes,
sobre a sombria arquitectura desta terra longamente apaixonada,
sobre a rosa que sobe até à aérea metalurgia das nuvens.