Speechless Rivers
When a river cuts, it cuts completely
the discourse its water was speaking;
cut, the water breaks into pieces,
into pools of water, paralyzed water.
Situated in a pool, water resembles
a word in its dictionary situation:
isolated, standing in the pool of itself
and, because it is standing, stagnant.
Because it is standing, it is mute,
and mute because it doesn’t communicate,
because this river’s syntax, the current
of water on which it ran, was cut.
*
The course of a river, its river-discourse,
can rarely be swiftly restored;
a river needs considerable water current
to recreate the current that created it.
Unless the grandiloquence of a flood
imposes a different, interim language,
a river needs many currents of water
for all of its pools to be phrased —
being restored from one pool to the next
in short phrases, then phrase to phrase,
until the river-sentence of the only discourse
in which it can speak will defy the drought.
O canavial e o mar
O que o mar sim ensina ao canaviaclass="underline"
o avançar em linha rasteira da onda;
o espraiar-se minucioso, de líquido,
alagando cova a cova onde se alonga.
O que o canavial sim ensina ao mar:
a elocução horizontal de seu verso;
a geórgica de cordel, ininterrupta,
narrada em voz e silêncio paralelos.
2
O que o mar não ensina ao canaviaclass="underline"
a veemência passional da preamar;
a mão-de-pilão das ondas na areia,
moída e miúda, pilada do que pilar.
O que o canavial não ensina ao mar:
o desmedido do derramar-se da cana;
o comedimento do latifúndio do mar,
que menos lastradamente se derrama.
The Canefield and the Sea
What the sea teaches the canefield:
the quiet rhythm of advancing waves;
its meticulous liquid spreading
that fills every hollow where it passes.
What the canefield teaches the sea:
the horizontal style of its verse;
the georgics of street poets, uninterrupted,
chanted out loud and in parallel silence.
2
What the sea doesn’t teach the canefield:
the passion of a rising tide;
the pestle-pounding of waves on sand,
ground ever finer, repesteled, repounded.
What the canefield doesn’t teach the sea:
the sugarcane’s unbridled flowing;
the moderation of the plantation-sea,
which flows less rampantly.
Os rios de um dia
Os rios, de tudo o que existe vivo,
vivem a vida mais definida e clara;
para os rios, viver vale se definir
e definir viver com a língua da água.
O rio corre; e assim viver para o rio
vale não só ser corrido pelo tempo:
o rio o corre; e pois que com sua água,
viver vale suicidar-se, todo o tempo.
2
Pois isso, que ele define com clareza,
o rio aceita e professa, friamente,
e se procuram lhe atar a hemorragia,
ou a vida suicídio, o rio se defende.
O que um rio do Sertão, rio interino,
prova com sua água, curta nas medidas:
ao se correr torrencial, de uma vez,
sobre leitos de hotel, de um só dia;
ao se correr torrencial, de uma vez,
sem alongar seu morrer, pouco a pouco,
sem alongá-lo, em suicídio permanente
ou no que todos, os rios duradouros;
esses rios do Sertão falam tão claro
que induz ao suicídio a pressa deles:
para fugir na morte da vida em poças
que pega quem devagar por tanta sede.
Rivers for a Day
Of all the living things there are, rivers
lead the clearest, most well-defined life;
to live, for a river, means to define itself,
and define means to live with its watery tongue.
The river flows; and so to live, for the river,
doesn’t just mean to endure time’s flowing;
it flows through time, and so to live also means
to commit suicide with its water, all the time.
2
What the river clearly defines
it coldly accepts and professes,
defending itself against all attempts
to stop its suicide life, its hemorrhaging.
Rivers in the Sertão, transient rivers,
prove this with their intermittent water:
by flowing torrentially, all at once,
over hotel beds used just for a day;
by flowing torrentially, all at once,
without slowly dragging out their dying,
without dragging it out in endless
suicide, like the rivers that endure.
Those Sertão rivers speak so clearly
that their rushing induces suicide: flight
into death from the life of shallow pools
that holds those who slowly, from thirst, slowly.
Psicanálise do açúcar
O açúcar cristal, ou açúcar de usina,
mostra a mais instável das brancuras:
quem do Recife sabe direito o quanto,
e o pouco desse quanto, que ela dura.
Sabe o mínimo do pouco que o cristal
se estabiliza cristal sobre o açúcar,
por cima do fundo antigo, de mascavo,
do mascavo barrento que se incuba;
e sabe que tudo pode romper o mínimo
em que o cristal é capaz de censura:
pois o tal fundo mascavo logo aflora
quer inverno ou verão mele o açúcar.
*
Só os bangüês que-ainda purgam ainda
o açúcar bruto com barro, de mistura;
a usina já não o purga: da infância,
não de depois de adulto, ela o educa;
em enfermarias, com vácuos e turbinas,
em mãos de metal de gente indústria,
a usina o leva a sublimar em cristal
o pardo do xarope: não o purga, cura.
Mas como a cana se cria ainda hoje,
em mãos de barro de gente agricultura,
o barrento da pré-infância logo aflora
quer inverno ou verão mele o açúcar.
Psychoanalysis of Sugar
Sugar crystals (the sugar from refineries)
exhibit the most unstable whiteness:
people from Recife know just how much,
and how very little, it will endure.
They know the slightness of how little
the crystals can keep the sugar crystallized
over its ancient past as raw sugar,
the clayish raw sugar that latently seethes;
and they know that anything can break
the slight power of crystals to inhibit,
for that raw-sugar past soon surfaces
when winter or summer melts sugar back to syrup.