Birds, beasts, and flowers

This is the iron age
but let us take heart
seeing iron brakes and bud
seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom
D. H. Lawrence

The docile drizzle of young women
drifts through the late room
(somewhere Lawrence’s peach ripens
in your hands).

Clouds of blossom appear in the distance
dawning on the coast of iron and of ice,
Miranda’s island knows the way
to the house of light,
written in the tiger’s blood,
which, in books,
switches on night’s fearful symmetry:
blood tainted by love
out of innocence
and experience.

In the late room,
the peach pulp, English literature wounded,
its stone pressed to Ophelia’s
flowering dress
that heard daggers
and bred lilacs out of the dead land.

Wish for the pomegranates, the figs,
the loquats: do not wish for the glutted,
acute stress
on the final syllable of the longest line.

© Translated by Ana Hudson, 2011

Birds, beasts, and flowers

This is the iron age
but let us take heart
seeing iron brake and bud
seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom
D. H. Lawrence

O aguaceiro manso das jovens
passeia na sala tardia
(o pêssego de Lawrence amadurece
algures nas tuas mãos).

Ao longe nuvens de flores aparecem
raiando a costa do ferro e do gelo,
a ilha de Miranda sabe o caminho
para a casa da luz,
escrito no sangue do tigre
que nos livros
acende a temível simetria da noite:
sangue sujo de amor
na inocência
e na experiência.

Na sala tardia,
a polpa ferida de literatura inglesa,
o caroço preso à floração
do vestido de Ofélia,
que ouviu adagas
e medrou lilases da terra sem vida.

Espera a romã, os figos,
a nêspera: não esperes o enfarte,
acento agudo
na sílaba final do mais longo dos versos.

in Berçário, 2004