The road as an earlier
refuge—
your childhood by the river,
in the dirt, lacking words:
children, horses, expected deaths,
extinct trees, a canoe—
in the same direction, the pace
of time reprints
the unthinkable: I ride
a horse, step into the canoe.
The road as a trace
in the sand—
a photo taken before the waves,
understanding without superstition:
the outside heat lightens
the nature inside,
footprints on the walls,
recall of a language—
the place we name
home takes us back.
The road as passage,
poorly lit—
occasionally a scare,
I lose its track
around a fixed point:
stacks of paper
stuffing reality,
gravelly deposits along the bottom,
we have no measures
to prevent the floods.
The road as a mirror,
a wall—
your steps cast mine
missing a fit,
the strings of oblivion loosen
and we open our eyes
we eat under the same roof
to synchronize the day
reinstating the urgency
of meeting again.
The road which is your horse,
my canoe.
___________________________________
Partidas
A estrada como refúgio
anterior—
sua infância à beira do rio,
no chão batido, pedindo palavras:
crianças, cavalos, mortes esperadas,
árvores extintas, uma canoa—
na mesma direção, o passo
estável do tempo transcreve
o absurdo: monto
num cavalo, entro na canoa.
A estrada como indício
na areia—
a foto tirada antes da onda,
o entendimento sem superstição:
o calor de fora iluminando
natureza por dentro,
marcas de pés nas paredes,
a lembrança como linguagem—
o lugar que chamamos
casa nos devolve.
A estrada como passagem,
à meia-luz—
de vez em quando um sobressalto,
perco a referência
em torno de um ponto fixo:
pilhas de papel
entulhando a realidade,
sedimentando fundo,
sem o cuidado de evitar
alagamentos.
A estrada como muro,
espelho—
o seu passo dentro do meu
sem caber direito,
um esquecimento mais profundo,
e os olhos abertos:
jantamos sob um mesmo teto
para sincronizar o dia,
reiterando a necessidade
do nosso encontro.
A estrada como o seu cavalo,
a minha canoa.
*
Translated from the Portuguese by Flávia Rocha and Idra Novey.
Image by Shawn Nystrand.
Flávia Rocha is a Brazilian poet, editor and journalist. She is the author of two poetry books, the bilingual A Casa Azul ao Meio-dia / The Blue House Around Noon (2005) and Quartos Habitáveis (2011), both published in Brazil. She holds an M.F.A. in Writing/Poetry from Columbia University, and is the editor-in-chief of Rattapallax, a literary magazine based out of New York City featuring contemporary American and International poetry, fiction, nonfiction, music and film. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
Idra Novey is the author of Exit, Civilian, selected for the 2011 National Poetry Series, and The Next Country, winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books. Her translations of Brazilian writers include The Clean Shirt of It: The Selected Poems of Paulo Henriques Britto, for which she received a PEN Translation Fund Award, and Birds for a Demolition: the Poems of Manoel de Barros, for which she received a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her new translation of Clarice Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H. was released in the U.S. and the U.K. to wide acclaim. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.
