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The Guest who refuses to be polite – impressions by Emanuel Melo
I’m hanging out with paulo da costa these days. On the crowded subway ride to work in the morning and again in the evening on the way home I listen to him; those around me don’t. But I prefer listening to him when I get inside my solitude, sitting on my sofa, in the quiet of my library, where I can be attentive without the pull of people’s chatter. Even at four in the morning, when I cannot sleep, he is still talking. Non-stop. He is the guest who refuses to go home at a decent hour and so, to be polite, I let him speak his words. He gives…
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Image – Nuno Júdice
IMAGE translated by paulo da costa The man who talked to himself in munich’s central station what language did he speak? What language speak those lost like that, on platforms of train stations, at night, when no kiosk sells newspapers or coffee? The munich man asked me for nothing, he didn’t even look as if he needed anything, meaning, he looked like someone who had arrived at the last stage the stage of someone who does not even need himself. Although, he spoke to me: in a tongue not resembling a language among those capable of expressing emotion or feeling, limited to a sequence of sounds whose logic…
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Zoology – The Blackbird (Nuno Júdice)
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Zoology – The Blackbird (Nuno Júdice)
ZOOLOGY : THE BLACKBIRD translated by paulo da costa Inside the cage, the blackbird has no yellower a beak than outside. The bird shrinks into a corner, poor thing, and seems shy, although it is the fault of who placed it there knowing a blackbird does not fall from the sky. There are birds like that, birds people place in a cage, despite their yellow beak. They do not sing. Do not fly. Do not speak. They are birds gone blind from the silence of oracles and dumb from the lucidity of prophets. Completely by chance, I opened the cage. And the bird just sat there,…
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Image – Nuno Júdice
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Class Struggle – Nuno Júdice
CLASS STRUGGLE translated by paulo da costa Not everyone who built the cathedrals witnessed the same. Some, by sunlight, erected towers and pinnacles and attained heaven, others, inside crypts, painted hells by candlelight, leaving room on the ground for the most anonymous of the dead. Those who reached the top, received the divine gaze and witnessed the triumph of spring dawn, those who stayed at the bottom, extracting the hallucinated gestures of demons from damp walls, exchanged obscenities and disease. And yet, the cathedral is unique, and those who visit, appreciating the entirety that, they say, was born of a perfect vision, do not think in details. Who cares…
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Coral Bracho – Four poems
Coral Bracho – Four Poems translated by paulo da costa La voz indígena Es un dolor de voz que se apaga. De voz eterna y profunda que así se apaga. Que así se apaga para nosotros. The indigenous voice It is the ache of a dying voice. Eternal voice and profound thus dying. Thus dying to us. Con abismada transparencia Eres el fuego del inicio Eres la luz en el instante sabio de hacinarse en el agua. Eres la voz, la transparencia que penetra, que engendra; la nota viva y diáfana que cae, con el candor de una certeza en el centro…
