Sunday, April 11, 2021

Judith Teixeira: "Onde Vou?"

I was going to write something about the pandemic, and how the so-called plague poems I wrote last year ended up just becoming regular poems (or vice versa), but I'm exhausted by my body's reaction to the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. It's wild that I, or anyone, has been vaccinated, barely over a year since the shit started hitting the fan.

But more on that later. Here's another draft translation of a Judith Teixeira poem. I plan on spending the rest of the spring and the summer working my way through her books of poetry.

Take care of yourselves, dear readers, and até já.


DAS

Onde Vou?

Onde vou eu, onde vou?
Já nem sei donde parti…
Se eu mesma não sei quem sou!
Achei-me dentro de ti.

Eu fui ninguém que passou,
eu não fui, nunca me vi…
Fui asa que palpitou…
Eu só agora existi.

Negra Dor espavorida
ou saudade dolorida
eu fui talvez no passado…

Sou triste por atavismo…
Não há ontem no cuidado
em que em cuidados me abismo.


Inverno — Hora Ignorada
1922

----- Where am I Going? Where am I going, where? I don’t even know where I started… If I myself don’t know, who does! I found myself within you. I was a passing nobody, I didn’t leave, I never saw myself… I was a beating wing… Only now did I exist.
Maybe in the past I was
Fearful Black Pain or sorrowful longing... I am saddened by atavism… There is no yesterday into the care of which I can hurl myself. Winter — Hour Unknown 1922