Tulips by Salgado Maranhão translated by Alexis Levitin
The east wind comes to lie
with the tulips
on the very stage
where dragonflies of blood
glitter among the buildings.
Rare
vignettes of sun
skate
surfaces of dung.
And the rage of plasma
written on asphalt
makes the coming of
an idyllic time improbable.
Oh, placenta of narcobabies and artifacts
at the dump!
Oh, blood-soaked lilies!
For whom this tingling
salvo of applause?
With shapes that rise
from the irrevocable abyss
words as well
come howling
and eager gazes also
stripping bare the gold of illustrious
mornings.
Origami Tiger by Salgado Maranhão translated by Alexis Levitin
For Alice K.
The blank page without a line
growls (beneath quantum time),
our carved up scars,
our marred and hardened hearts,
a bloody lava flow ( lots more aflame
than that babel of phonemes
--sliced through with vanities en masse--)
fronting vast futilities of class
where 1+1 makes 2 is not quite right
and where the Word does not create the light,
for the world, at times, fears the curse
of the word that may turn into verse.
And if the modern monitor
denounces paper as a dinosaur
the blank page --in its nullity--
spells out silence in proximity
to chaos. And fire cannot scatter,
nor can water splatter
to prevent it turning to a fierce
origami tiger without peers.
© 2005-2009 Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas