It’s just over 33 years now since the great Brazilian avant-garde poet Paulo Leminski was untimely taken from us. Perhaps it seemed at the time that he was a lightning flash in the sky, a sudden illumination swiftly darkened. After all, his entire published career lasted barely more than a decade before his death from cirrhosis in June 1989.
And yet that flash continues to live on the optic nerve of Lusophone lovers of poetry everywhere, burned into the collective psyche. This latest (mis)translation is one of so many of his poems which like the man himself, seem to maintain a presence long after their encounter.
The Little Ministry
(mis)translation of Adminimistério by Paulo Leminski
When the mystery comes
you will find me sleeping,
half-turned towards Saturday,
half-turned towards Sunday.
There is no sound or silence
when the mystery grows.
Silence is a senseless thing
that I never stop watching.
The mystery is, I think, something
more of time than space.
When the mystery comes back,
my sleep becomes so unfixed
that no fear in the world
could hope to sustain me.
Midnight, an open book.
Mosquitos and moths land
on the doubtful words.
Could it be the white of the page
resembles light solidified?
Who knows the scent of blackness
fallen there like remnants?
Or do the insects greet
the letters of the alphabet
as distant relations, family?