Camilo Pessanha: "Quando voltei encontrei os meus passos"

It's been a while since I translated a Camilo Pessanha poem. I started on this one a couple months ago and polished it up today, though it could still use work, as is always the case. In keeping with my recent thoughts on literal vs. poetic translation- mainly inspired by conversations with my wife- I've taken a little more liberty with this poem, though I've left in Pessanha's beloved dashes and ellipses. I encountered another discrepancy between the original Clepsidra text and the one used in the volume translated by Rui Cascais; naturally, I've followed the original.

Diverta-se, folks, and, as always, obrigado por ler a minha escrita.

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Quando voltei encontrei os meus passos
Ainda frescos sobre a húmida areia.
A fugitiva hora, reevoquei-a,
— Tão rediviva! nos meus olhos baços...

Olhos turvos de lágrimas contidas.
— Mesquinhos passos, porque doidejastes
Assim transviados, e depois tornastes
Ao ponto das primeiras despedidas?

Onde fostes sem tino, ao vento vário,
Em redor, como as aves num aviário,
Até que a asita fofa lhes faleça...

Toda essa extensa pista — para quê?
Se há-de vir apagar-vos a maré,
Como as do novo rasto que começa...

***

When I returned I found my steps
Still fresh on the wet sand.
I recalled the fugitive hour,
— So revived! In my dimmed eyes...

Eyes turbid with tears held back.
— Halting steps, why did you play the fool
so misled, and then return
To the point of the first goodbyes?

Where you went mindlessly into the fickle wind,
Around, like the birds in an aviary,
Until the soft wings die...

All this long path- for what?
If the tide comes to wash you away,
Like the new trail that begins...

"On the Passing of Lloyd Martin Smith"

 "On the Passing of Lloyd Martin Smith"


Plenus annis abiit, plenus honoribus - Pliny the Younger



Pall Mall straights,
smoked down to the last knuckle
and chased with bad coffee.

(Go ahead and take a gander
all the way to the bottom of your cup
if you don't believe me.)

Good thing a man ain't judged
by the quality of the cup he pours,
but rather by the spirit in which
it's made
and offered.

Anyway,
alas:

Nigh three decades of practical
advice, plain speech, judgment
laid out just like that
or reserved, when that was
called for,
have ended.

There'll be no more talk of
Vietnam, Newton High,
CB radio, books, the flora
and fauna of East Texas,
memories of Annell,
Marine Corps shit, uranium mining
in New Mexico,
all the things that made/make
life interesting
while seated at the counter, ashtrays
filling, coffee cups emptying,
books always within reach.

Death doesn't snatch life away
quite as quickly as we think.
Shit hits the fan before we
know it, sure, but history shows
that it doesn't always
rob our memory blind.

Dirt curving from county to private
roads; the cattle guards we built
in '91, long since filled in;
the rich, sweet, never quite identifiable
taste of well water; the woods
worthy of their own poetic cycle.

Memory bleeds
like the wound it is,
but we can stanch it
with Pall Mall straights
and bad coffee
here on this dining room table.

Admire the model trains,
the deer rifle,
the shortwave radio,
the heaping plates of fried venison
and okra, then set them aside

and let's do what we can:
forgive the bad coffee,
and send the man's spirit
out among the pines,
where it belongs.