Olá amigos! Welcome to SUN INTO SEA, a site for occasional translations of contemporary Portuguese poetry. The first poet I'll introduce is Jorge Melícias (b. 1970), author of several books of poetry and translation. His most recent book, disrupção, is a collection of his previously published work. More translation of his work, and an essay of mine on it, can be found at Duration Press.


Here's what Jorge has to say about his poetry:

As Roland Barthes reminds us “writing is not an instrument of communication, it is not an open road where only one linguistic intention travels.” In this sense, a writer’s choice of a certain tone or form (and, in choosing, the writer distinguishes himself to the same extent that he commits) will be, forcedly, a choice of conscience and not of efficiency. Before whatever one admits or excludes, style will inscribe itself, always, in the sphere of liberty, though, in a larger sense, this same style can turn into both a grandeur and a prison of writing. Jean-Luc Nancy in his essay "Resistance de la Poésie" tells us that poetry “makes in difficulty.” From this perspective he speaks not of an access to meaning but of an access of meaning. More than a dialectical process this moment will always be a solitary victory. One can no longer look for, whatever the cost, an access point to meaning but must accept it as an invasive and totalizing presence, without any cession or reprieve. The paradox resides, in my poetry, in uniting to this suffusion of meaning a growing demand for rigor, even if all exactitude will remain approximate. Like one who, stubbornly, erects dams in the blood, tightening the siege more and more upon the impossibility of saying.

For me beauty is inextricably linked with violence. A burst violence, trussed, as latent as it is recidivist. I don’t think much of beauty in its passive eloquence, all of its animation stolen, like a finished product. I think, sincerely, that the poem is not the territory of ethics or of redemption. And this pedagogical character, almost salvationist, of writing is something that I do not understand. I assume, in my poetry, this pure negativity. And I think that only through the reiteration of horror is some reprieve from guilt possible.

I want every poem to be a gift of pure violence. But a violence veiled by the square, as if only angularly would it be possible to foreshorten horror. A butchery without blood, an ablation so exact that nothing would extravasate.









Ten Poems

Jorge Melícias










Trabalho a crueldade
pelo lado da exuberância.
Como instigando a carne
à veranação das goivas.


I work cruelty
with exuberance.
Like instigating flesh
to the vernation of gouges.










Elas são por dentro da ideia
uma efabulação ignívaga: as dragas.
Progridem nas aluviões
como cirros insanes.
Trabalham no sangue a alegoria.


They are inside the idea
a fire-eaten fiction: the dregs.
They progress in the alluvium
like insane tendrils.
They work allegory into the blood.










A chacina é uma indução
à espera do seu tempo.
Sobre esse propósito
estableço-me unívoco.
E onde cães e homens
disputam a carniça
à lisura dos ossos
inscrevo a consolação.


The slaughter is an induction
waiting for its time.
Upon that purpose
I establish myself univocal.
And where dogs and men
fight over the meat
down to the smoothness of bone
I write consolation.










1.


Sobre a imposição dos abismos
encimarei os gárrulos.
Erguer-me-ei das jugulares
como a pura dicção do medo.


Above the imposition of abysses
I will surmount the babblers
and rise from the jugulars
like a pure expression of fear.










2.


Descerei das canas
para a rasura da redenção.
No dorso o relâmpago
como uma carena blasfémica.
E um amor profundo pela impiedade.


I will climb down the reeds
to the erasure of redemption.
On the back of lightning
like a blasphemous keel.
And a profound love of impiety.










3.


Caminharei entre os homens
com um punção virado ao medo.
As meninges
recrudescendo nas navalhas
como um apostema.
Todo o metal sitiado
pela injunção das ínguas.


I will travel among men
like a puncture turned to fear.
The meninges
recrudesce on the knives
like an abscess.
All metal is besieged
by the bidding of the bubboes.










Um pulmão sulfúrico
extraído à elisão do ar.
Ateado desde o âmnio
como uma degenerescência vital.
Os estames
disseminando-se na refracção,
reduzindo a fluidez
à consumação do atrito.


A sulfuric lung
extracted to the elision of air.
Inflamed to the amnion
like a vital degeneration.
The stamen
disseminate themselves in the refraction,
reducing fluidity
to the consummation of attrition.










Reconduzo o medo
à minuciosa obstinação
de um ângulo.
E onde a febre tange
a esquadria
radicarei a chacina.


I lead fear back
to the minute obstinacy
of an angle.
And where fever touches
the square
I will root the slaughter.










Adestramos na carne
os estrepes do horror.
E pela elocução do medo
inferimos da consolação:

so o ferro
remirá em si a ferida.


In the flesh we train
the thorns of horror.
And by the elocution of fear
we infer the consolation:

only the iron
gazes at itself in the wound.










Vi os campos inçados pela improbidade.
Os justos como plainas alucinadas
sobre a incontrição
das esquírolas.
E o desespero
era uma forma de beatitude.


I saw fields crowded by dishonesty.
The just with planes hallucinated
above the unrepentance
of splinters.
And despair
was a form of beatitude.



translation Brian Strang