Rui Pires Cabral
October 27th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Of course I find the most appropriate time to update this blog is during my busiest night yet as a graduate student– papers galore to grade, translations to re-enter, and applications upon applications for glorious after glorious Piper global opportunities. But– but! I remembered, while writing these meandering essays about why, blah blah blah, I must travel, blah blah blah, a poem I found by Rui Pires Cabral in an international poetry anthology gracing a Parnassian bookshelf. Here it is, in all its translated-from-Portuguese deliciousness:
POLISH RESTAURANT
The night is sustained by its décor
like a dead man linked to his machines.
Customers leaf through books, all Poles
from the same block. We suddenly
realize: there is something beyond words
that resists deciphering. In foreign cities
we make better use of our senses, we are bolder
in our intuitions. And after the soup and the warm
tea, going out into the street, we can discover
that we are still alive and that, after all,
we have never known any other condition.
This is the hour that reveals us.
And what we call reality
heads off with us in the same direction.
like a dead man linked to his machines.
Customers leaf through books, all Poles
from the same block. We suddenly
realize: there is something beyond words
that resists deciphering. In foreign cities
we make better use of our senses, we are bolder
in our intuitions. And after the soup and the warm
tea, going out into the street, we can discover
that we are still alive and that, after all,
we have never known any other condition.
This is the hour that reveals us.
And what we call reality
heads off with us in the same direction.
–translated by Alexis Levitin, copyright 2003 Averno, Lisboa
SO. GOOD.
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