There is enough universality in a poem

I taught him a few words, trying to dig them out from the inside, so he could get into them and understand.

When I read foreign poets, or try to translate what I write, there is always a question that arises: am I being a complete house with each transcription? Will there be a lack of tiles and windows for its perfect construction?

The other day, a Pakistani friend, who neither speaks nor understands Portuguese, heard my poetry and his arms tingled. He asked me if I could declaim for him. Tears came to his eyes and he told me that he didn't understand a single word, but that he felt he understood that, for sure, it was something that called us to live this life calmly. At least that's what he wanted after listening to her.

After that, I taught him a few words, trying to dig them out from the inside, so he could get into them and understand. We quickly made the connection to words in Urdu, and the thing was understood, but I felt that the excavation was halfway through, and that's why it only fit half a body – half an understanding.

I also asked him to show me poets and translate some poems for me. From what he told me, passion reigned, lost loves, all guided by a God I don't live. That's why I could only peek inside those poems, through the universal windows, the rest I was looking at from the outside, and from the outside things are more dreamed than inhabited.

Proof of this are the words that I bring from each trip, but that I will never use in my daily life. Like 'maningue', which in Mozambique is used to express a lot. But 'maningue' becomes more than a lot, it's a waddle with the intensity of things that doesn't make so much sense when told those who have never danced them. But I like to always carry it with me, as an exercise for imagination and memories.

Another example is the initiative in which I participated – Poesias do Mundo, at the MED Festival, in Loulé. A table was extended to receive Turkish, Spanish, Ukrainian, Romanian and Portuguese poetry. Poetry was not translated, that was the premise. Apart from Spanish, I didn't do more than just feel what each other language said to me and I managed to absorb it, because I wasn't into them.

But they said something that resonated with me and made me want to know the true meaning, or at least get closer to it, leave my eyes there for a while, rest my arms.

Álvaro de Campos' Birthday Party is celebrated within a multiculturalism that touches nationalities such as Dutch and Japanese, through the excerpt “In the time when they celebrated my birthday, I was happy and no one was dead.” (Birthday) translated into several languages, extending beyond Tavira (in Glasgow and Brasília), and that fascinates me. As if words were just a means of transport, and the most important thing had been the encounter of these people with the simplicity of this poet who leaves freedom for those who receive him, regardless of alphabets and cultures.

Fernando Pessoa wrote in Portuguese and English. The last thing he wrote was “I know not what tomorrow will bring”. Nobody knows why, but I like to think that he chose the most universal language in our days (perhaps not his) to express the most primary thing that accompanies us throughout our lives – the inevitability of not knowing tomorrow.

Therefore, as much as poetry obeys a rhythm, music is formed in it and there are patterns that want to shape it, translation can be the curious and human attempt to get closer, to create a perfect house, or a more solid bridge. So I have no doubt that words bring people together and poetry shapes that house around them. A house that, far from perfect, helps to build something bigger.

 

 
 



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