entrenchment clauses by ramonlvdiaz

[riverrun]

[eng]
I see on tv set the proclamation of an outcry,
a zealous district attorney charging zealots,
denouncing in his own nuncio all the sins
beyond equator, maybe dazed by ipso facto
and equinoxes, in tridimensional worksheets
that gave birth to Watergates, Tea Parties and
Trail of Tears to everyone who gone aboard
on search for gold rush and Eldorados. Since
Easter and other liturgies we pray Our Father
as we distill all this stagery through mass
media and their drastic decline in revenues
now ruled by microtargeting and doesn't matter
anymore the vox populi or the urbi et orbi, all this
Babel Tower along never-ending pornography
ads like mazes and puzzles of Jorge Luis Borges
that melt Hamlet monoliths and monologues
already nonsufficient to our daily standards,
to then slip through Jean Paul Satre's hands
allowing the asumption of archbishops upon
their versatile vaticination around the vicinity
or within non-volatile Vatican that settled down
between interstitial spaces of our boneless marrow,
or even further: over the condo city architecture,
where lies Olimpus and Parnassus without any stain,
on barbed wire fenceline over cresol and logarithms,
all hermetically surrounded by eugenics plus
the age of aquarius that secretes sacred flames,
and this too much explicit fifth dimension where
our translucent bodies remain submissive
as automata beings on soap opera breaks;
in our hand forsaking the world intermezzo,
in someone desperately trying to win the lottery,
in everything that still remains on the Feeding of 5,000;
in Black Orpheus and bland orgies, collagen injections and
coelacanths extinction, on shepherd's mass upon a rostrum
or even in peculiar hypothesis of earthquake in Helsinki.
It doesn't matter! All poetry tends to the Gaussian curves.

echolocated in hanging gardens of Babylon,
at balls and satyricons along East Village,
at carnival-like and ethylic pace we march
under this bucolic task to love only in secret,
this invisibility through ephemeral consensus
already used to the stockpile of bumper stickers,
glistening many kinds of abyss and synecdoche
and a whole watery flood of waste and isthmos
of origin myths in straightfoward fall.
upon war and its seven-headed hydras,
in the contingency of the earth and its affixed abscesses
in the consanguineous exile of sex without abscissas
in the constituent assembly with its sections and caputs.

the campaign promises indeed last,
biddings gain the pardon of courts,
shantytowns and projects share
magnetism and happy endings
through osmosis, to clash on the upper
Mardi Gras picthes until the outter
sound of bass drums born out of blue,
perhaps absorbed by fissile matter
of stanzas without any constraint or
maybe against the self evidence in Betsy Ross or
under the fraction of non-recurring decimals tolls.

we are all at the mercy of malice and militia
hostages of systematic feasts and stochastic
paradises; of poems without epidermal surface, (they promptly accept their trivial tasks)
within deep verses only in a single vertex and (to cash the daily special dish of poetry)
one more attempt to rush towards Truman Capote,
Bukowsky sketches to sear viscera and blue skies,
in this careless universe of casual poets
that randomly appear non exactly at dusk
untill the end of pre-framed horizons or
on vegetative states and diffuse yearnings
which brings the crowd together by applause,
pervious to the emergence of moments,
as if they existed only for such a premise.

they fear the natural flow of things,
or if rivers streams dry without why,
or why tributary ones aren't resilient,
or who are guilty of capital offence
of insignificance, whom by resonance
in Uncle Tom's Cabin let go on a rare
instant our surge of genuine solitude
and loose syllables ... they forgot what
they are as wonderful counterpoint sigils
reaching a mature silence by failure, under
vectors about to come without any solution.

In no less than a second someone would
set the full weight of the landscape on my
direction as if he or she always knew,
as if this late imagination were enough;
sculptures without torso, uninterrupted, rose
of his eyes then restricted instants ago up to
the square simulacrum: in your iris every event
horizon hardens as pumice far beyond systems:
boozers and square, lovers and strangers, cars and
cardboard parts, buildings topped by the historical
heritage and in all oncoming marriages and
entire contexts, conspiracies, sighs, gossip,
oxymorons and gibberish, whispers and half-smiles ...
shards of glass, chaos and butterfly wings, pub philosophy,
adulterated whisky, sausage without regular inspection
all jurisprudence subject towards the ten commandments
and the wandering heart of weekends ...

Carnival liquefied and the ashes of
wednesday spread way beyond
March: only deaths seems the same.
the jazz (and also all the rest) gone blue ...
laws of celestial mechanics became uneven,
far beyond downtown, almost by default, as
an entrenchment clause cyphers the unknown.



[pt]
vejo na televisão a proclamação dum grito,
um preclaro promotor com o dedo em riste
denuncia em seu núncio todos os pecados
ao sul do equador, estupefato pelo ipso facto
e seus equinócios, em planilhas tridimensionais
que deflagram negócios, tordesilhas e capitanias
hereditárias e todo o povo que de pronto embarca
nessas searas para a terra santa, que do carnaval à
páscoa e outras tantas liturgias apela ao pai nosso
enquanto destila dramaturgia
pelos jornais ocupados com a
redução drástica de sua edição, com o
marketing silencioso e pouco importa
o vox populi, o urbi et orbi e tudo o
mais que borbulha na web, essa torre
de babel implícita nos infinitos ads de
pornografia como labirintos de Jorge
Luis Borges que dissolve o ser ou não
ser já hipossuficiente e que ao escorrer
por entre os dedos de Sartre permite
o consumo de sumos sacerdotes e
seus vaticínios versáteis ou totalmente em
vaticanos inoxidáveis que se instalam nos
espaços intersticiais da nossa medula,
que sobre o esqueleto de condomínios,
são olimpos e parnasos sem qualquer mácula,
sob o arame farpado há logaritmos e creolina,
hermeticamente cercados por eugenia e
era de aquário que secreta chamas-trina,
essa quinta dimensão explícita onde nossos
corpos translúcidos permanecem submissos
como seres autômatos no intervalo entre telenovelas,
na palma da mão desatenta ao intermezzo do mundo,
naquele que muda o canal buscando o primeiro milhão ou
no milagre da multiplicação de tudo o que é o mesmo:
orfeus negros e orgias brandas, injeção de colágeno e
celacantos em extinção, no sermão do pastor no palanque
ou na hipótese de terremoto com epicentro em Helsinque.
pouco importa! todos os versos tendem a curva de Gauss.

ecolocalizados em babilônias suspensas
pelos bailes e satíricons do Baixo Leblon
seguimos em procissão etílica a profissão
bucólica de amar somente em segredo
esse anonimato em consenso efêmero,
afeito ao estoque de epígrafes de para-choque
que alumia vários tipos de abismo e sinédoque
e todo um dilúvio estanque de esmos e istmos,
de mitos de origem em vosso franco declive.
na guerra conseguinte e seus bichos de sete cabeças
na contingência da terra e seus abcessos anexos
no desterro consanguíneo do sexo sem abscissas
na assembleia constituinte com seus incisos e caputs.

promessas de campanha perduram,
licitações recebem o perdão de tribunais,
favelas-bairros irmanam e ilham se filiam
como ímãs de anteprojetos de final
feliz a colidir nas oitavas superiores
da folia, pelo som transcendental dos
surdos que nascem meio sem origem,
talvez absorvidos pela matéria físsil
de versos que insurgem sem controle,
avessos à ordem e ao progresso tão evidentes,
sob a fração de dízimos esses-sim-periódicos.

estamos todos à mercê de malícias e milícias
reféns de banquetes sistemáticos e paraísos
estocásticos; de poemas sem sua superfície epidérmica, (aceitam de pronto sua incumbência)
com os versos profundos apenas em um único vértice, (ressuscitam o prato feito da poesia)
com o repasto de Nelson Rodrigues entre os subúrbios
com o artifício Augusto de trespassar Anjos e vísceras,
nesse universo displicente de poetas de
ocasião que surgem exatamente ao acaso e
no ocaso de horizontes pré-frabricados,
anelos vegetativos ou no sonho difuso
que congrega a multidão pelo aplauso,
algo permeáveis a facilidade do instante,
como se só existissem para tal premissa.

eles temem o concurso natural das coisas,
ou que os rios sequem sem explicação,
que cursos tributários não sejam resilientes,
ou que sejam culpados do crime capital
da insignificância, que por ressonância
em Macabéa desaguam sobre uns raros
instantes nossos surtos de solidão genuína
e sílabas soltas... esquecem-se ali que
são os belos estandartes de contrapartidas
e que há um silêncio maduro na falência
de seus vetores que resultam inconclusos.

em não menos que um segundo alguém
projeta todo o peso da paisagem sobre
mim como se ele sempre soubesse,
como se bastasse a imaginação tardia;
esculturas sem torso, ininterruptas, ergueram-se
de suas pupilas até então restritas ao simulacro
da esquina: seus olhos em cada evento horizonte
enrijecia em pedra pomes muito além das rotinas:
bêbados e sóbrios, amantes e avulsos, carros e
pedaços de papelão, edifícios tombados pelo
patrimônio e em todos os matrimônios futuros,
contextos inteiros, conspirações, suspiros e
fofocas, oximoros e tatibitate, sussurros e semi-sorrisos...
cacos de vidro, caos e asas de borboleta, filosofia de
padaria, aguardente adulterado, salsicha sem vistoria
toda jurisprudência passível aos dez mandamentos
e o coração vagabundo do fim de semana...

o carnaval liquefez-se e as cinzas da
quarta-feira alastraram-se bem depois
de março: só as mortes pareciam as mesmas.
o samba (e também todo o resto) agoniza...
leis da mecânica celeste tornam-se distintas,
bem além da periferia, funcionando à revelia,
como cláusula pétrea que cifra até o que não se
sabia.

[k-j]

Wow!

A great pleasure to read this in Portuguese (and many, many new words learnt)!

This poem really seems to catch the Brazilian zeitgeist. It's completely crazy and I couldn't stop reading!

I like "Watergates, Tea Parties and Trail of Tears" (should be "Trails") as a piece of creative cross-cultural translation. But I don't think it's necessary, and I don't think you need to change "Baixo Leblon" to "East Village". And the same for the other cultural references, Nelson Rodrigues, A Hora da Estrela etc. It's a Brazilian poem and the references should stay in Brazil. By translating it your goal is to bring Brazil to an English-speaking audience, not to swap Rio for New York.

I applaud you for taking on the translation. I think translating this wild poem would be a major job for anyone. But your English is not natural enough to make it completely convincing. There are many places where you could use the help of a native English speaker. You should find someone who speaks English fluently (as well as decent Portuguese) to help you with this project.

Muito obrigado por dar-me a conhecer este ótimo poema, vou buscar outros do mesmo cara!

Abraços

[riverrun]

Actually this is my poem which I translated. I'm brazilian with spanish father. Glad that you liked the zeitgeist pace. It's the result of post electoral campaign here on Brazil -- so the vertigo was almost a prerequisite. Regarding the specificity of some translations I agree with Henri Meschonnic, poet and translator (Éthique et politique du traduire, 2007) when we writes: "We must translate an enunciation inseparably from its utterance, we must acknowledge that the notion of meaning is an epistemological obstacle to the thought of language. Therefore translating a serial semantics, which exceeds the traditional objection according to which what has been done in the phonology of one language system can obviously not be redone in the phonology of another language system (what Ezra Pound called melopeia in ABC of Reading). Because it is not a language system that we have to translate, but what a poem does to its language, thus we must invent discourse equivalences in the target language: prosody for prosody, metaphor for metaphor, pun for pun, rhythm for rhythm."

So that's why I translated Baixo Leblon as East Village because both neighborhoods have this artistic-bohemian-trending quality. I remembered when I went to both places I found some similiarities between them, it became somehow a memento. I saw other day the Wayne Wang movie "Smoke" (Paul Auster screenplay) with Wiliam Hurt (as writer) and Harvey Keitel (as smoke shop owner). One scene both are talking about hobbies and the Harvey Keitel character says he likes to take pictures everyday at same hour of the same corner near his shop. Then the William Hurt character says: "they are all the same pictures". Harvey says "not they are not. One is full of people, other almost empty. One it's raining, other has clear skies, and so on... The text is just a pretext, an excuse as Bertolt Brecht already said. I'm not worried about geography itself, I'm more worried about equivalence, or better saying about geometry. When I state that Baixo Leblon is East Village, I know they aren't the same but they are the same in my poem and not because I wrote (I'm not a arrogant person) it's because the rules of the poem. I'm just the guy who wrote, the idea underneath it's what really matters.

Actually my goal it's not to bring only english-to-portuguese and vice-versa, but stand not-exactly at middle, reflecting each other like waves on a lake. I like the ressonance between them. Of course there are the formalities which we can't forget neither disregard but I think that are room to play with gramatical mirrors.

Abraços, feliz pelo teu comentário

[Poet]

This was so complex and I had almost no idea what you were trying to say in this poem. I like the abundance of words though. It was quite interesting really.