Nono soneto traduzido do Português

   Can it be right to give what I can give?
   To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
   As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
   Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
   Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live
   For all thy adjurations?  O my fears,
   That this can scarce be right!  We are not peers
   So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,
   That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
   Be counted with the ungenerous.  Out, alas!
   I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
   Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
   Nor give thee any love—which were unjust.
   Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A meu irmão branco.

Cher frère blanc,
Quand je suis né, j'étais noir,
Quand j'ai grandi, j'étais noir,
Quand je suis au soleil, je suis noir,
Quand je suis malade, je suis noir,
Quand je mourrai, je serai noir.
Tandis que toi, homme blanc,
Quand tu es né, tu étais rose,
Quand tu as grandi, tu étais blanc,
Quand tu vas au soleil, tu es rouge,
Quand tu as froid, tu es bleu,
Quand tu as peur, tu es vert,
Quand tu es malade, tu es jaune,
Quand tu mourras, tu seras gris.

Alors, de nous deux,
Qui est l'homme de couleur ?







Caro irmão branco,
Quando nasci, era negro,
Quando cresci, era negro,
Quando tomo sol, sou negro,
Quando adoeço, sou negro,
Quando morrer, serei negro.
Enquanto tu, homem branco,
Quando nasceste, eras rosa,
Quando cresceste, eras branco,
Quando tomas sol, és vermelho,
Quando tens frio, és azul,
Quando tens medo, és verde,
Quando adoeces, és amarelo,
Quando morrreres, serás cinza.

Então, de nós dois,
Quem é o homem de cor?

-Léopold Sédar Senghor

Scotland my lover

There are mountains that are more to me than men,
There are rivers that are more to me than love,
There's a rock where my soul takes cover.
Wild winds on a maddened world have driven, 
Lifted me up to the bare hills above,
Scotland, my lover.

Here is a lover who will never change,
In storm and stillness, every lightning mood,
New ways of loving I'll discover,
A living sureness nothing can estrange.
Your grief and joy will be my daily food,
Scotland, my lover.

Ours is the love of lovers born to belong,
Our hearts sing the same music, beat as one.
Our glass of the water of life brims over,
Our thrice-rich, flowering native song,
Prodigal and gay. And, when my song is done,
I'll lie with you, my lover.

Clear northern skies lit childhood's innocence,
The day's darg over, dew under my feet, bare
on the cool grass, stars blaze and hover.
O still make love with me, far from the decadence
of this dire century, of love's despair,
Scotland, my jewel, my lover.


-Nannie Katharin Wells

Grandpa's Soup

No one makes soup like my Grandpa’s,
with its diced carrots the perfect size
and its diced potatoes the perfect size
and its wee soft bits –
what are their names?
and its big bit of hough,
which ryhmes with loch, floating
like a rich island in the middle of the soup sea.

I say, Grandpa, Grandpa your soup is the best soup in the whole world.
And Grandpa says, Och,
which rhymes with hough and loch,
Och, Don’t be daft,
because he’s shy about his soup, my Grandpa.
He knows I will grow up and pine for it.
I will fall ill and desperately need it.
I will long for it my whole life after he is gone.
Every soup will become sad and wrong after he is gone.
He knows when I’m older I will avoid soup altogether.
Oh Grandpa, Grandpa, why is your soup so glorious? I say
tucking into my fourth bowl in a day.

Barley! That’s the name of the wee soft bits. Barley.

- Jackie Kay

Ninharia aliterativa e porca

Passando pedestre pela
Calçada cruzei um cocô de cachorro
Certamente cevado a cenoura

Notre Dame de Paris

Where a Roman judged a foreign people
A basilica stands and, first and joyful
Like Adam once, an arch plays with its own ribs:
Groined, muscular, never unnerved.

From outside, the bones betray the plan:
Here flying buttresses ensure
That cumbersome mass shan't crush the walls—
A vault bold as a battering-ram is idel.

Elemental labyrinth, unfathomable forest,
The Gothic soul's rational abyss,
Egyptian power and Christian shyness,
Oak together with reed—and perpendicular as tsar.

But the more attentively I studied,
Notre Dame, you monstrous ribs, your stronghold,
The more I thought: I too one day shall create
Beauty from cruel weight.


-Osip Mandelshtam

Imitation from the Edda

Old as the hills and more bare
my head, with its stony thoughts
cobweb-laced to the measure and thickness
of centenary lianas in womby jungles.

Old as stone my bones, and as stiff;
Brittle as chalk and whiter that wheat
chaffed by flails dangling from great hands.

Stringy ropes of tired muscle dangle
tying themselves into knots of knots
the pain a fog so thick you can feel it
(or could, had you nerves left to feel)

Elli, old age, vanquisher of gods
devourer of mountains, queen of private hells,
waits for you with bated breath