by Salgado Maranhão.
Translated by Alexis Levitin.
sun still nocturnal
birds breaking
into day.
Other work by Salgado Maranhão and Alexis Levitin:
Tag Archives: Salgado Maranhão
Mere Honor
by Salgado Maranhão.
Translated by Alexis Levitin.
losing my shine, I turned sober.
dry, alone with myself, left-over.
a bull, whose flesh is turned to bone.
a fruit whose rind is now its stone.
from light to lucidity—already stripped bare
I’ve got my steps but not the way.
I no longer need, I no longer care
I’m filled with the nothing of days.
Other work by Salgado Maranhão and Alexis Levitin:
The Poet and Things
by Salgado Maranhão.
Translated by Alexis Levitin.
things want to flash through
the poem
with its crust of entanglements,
things want to dwell in
the poem
becoming toys.
it rains on the fibers
of some secret essence
and the poem tears apart
the poet
and his structure.
Instruments of the Home
by Salgado Maranhão.
Translated by Alexis Levitin.
the window of the apartment spies
on the home
expressing a language of within
printed on a horizon of beyond
allying itself with the grumbling of the furniture
dismantled, motionless.
in the room
objects
pair up
in a wordless pact
singing their silence
mocking us mortals.
The Sign of Steel
by Salgado Maranhão. Translated by Alexis Levitin.
for Jean Claude Elias
the scar suggests
the struggle and the slash
in the drama of the gods,
the darting of a fine-honed blade.
(one almost disbelieves,
denying what is written,
the promissory note
underscoring pain)
the scar speaks
fingerprints of steel
the blade, the ball of lead,
and what remains unsaid.
Other work by Salgado Maranhão (translated by Alexis Levitin):
Zip Street Blues
by Salgado Maranhão. Translated by Alexis Levitin.
the rage of diesel horses
rolls
to the trotting of
the tendoned days.
strays smashed to tin
beneath the press of tires
–and beastly human beings.
(all in transit
some not yet intransigent
others already late
accompanying their bodies to the wake.)
and the afternoon roars: rust
and the breeze burns: soot.
Other work by Salgado Maranhão (translated by Alexis Levitin):
Moviement
by Salgado Maranhão. Translated by Alexis Levitin.
now it’s another landscape
written
on the plasma
and in the mist
flowing
between one’s fingers
like eager birds
slipping through
the wind.
now it is another scaffold
of pieces playing chess
with chance:
the city and its clouded corneas.
mornings AR-15
afternoons AK-47
delinquents among rats
and big-shots’ shit.
the city in all its to-do
gulping down hot-dogmas,
sucking mint drops of death.
Other work by Salgado Maranhão (translated by Alexis Levitin):