It's been a while since I translated a Camilo Pessanha poem, so here's "Viola chinesa". The viola in question, if you go by the images you get when you Google the phrase, is most likely a 琵琶 pipa, AKA the "Chinese lute."
I wish I knew the circumstances under which Pessanha heard the instrument, since the poem seems to juxtapose two elements: the sound of the pipa, and whatever dull conversation he's stuck having when he hears it. I doubt he was chatting with Cantonese-speaking locals, but rather Macau's stuffy, provincial Portuguese administrators and their families, or maybe the local Macanese, neither of which group would have serenaded their guests with the pipa. That's why this poem makes me think Pessanha was zoning out during some social event and heard, or imagined, a pipa somewhere in the distance that provided a distraction—albeit a painful one—from the situation at hand.
I've more or less given up on following Pessanha's punctuation, though I also try not to insert too much of my own. I've also rendered things a bit more colloquially than in the past.
Enjoy, dear reader/caro leitor/看倌, and I'll catch you soon.
DAS
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"Viola chinesa"
Camilo Pessanha
Ao longo da viola morosa
Vai adormecendo a parlenda,
Sem que, amadornado, eu atenda
A lengalenga fastidiosa.
Sem que o meu coração se prenda,
Enquanto, nasal, minuciosa,
Ao longo da viola morosa,
Vai adormecendo a parlenda.
Mas que cicatriz melindrosa
Há nele, que essa viola ofenda
E faz que as asitas distenda
Numa agitação dolorosa?
Ao longo da viola, morosa...
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"Chinese Viola"
Camilo Pessanha
As the viola slowly plays
the chatter drifts off,
my languorous attention is not on
the tedious prattle.
My heart isn't in it,
as, nasal, painstaking,
the viola slowly plays,
the chatter drifting off.
But what sensitive scar
does it bear, that the viola offends,
and makes its little wings spread
in a painful flutter?
As the viola plays, slowly...
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