Portugal e Gana na POESIA

PORTUGAL
Garras dos sentidos (Agustina Bessa-Luís)


 Não quero cantar amores,
Amores são passos perdidos,
São frios raios solares,
Verdes garras dos sentidos.

São cavalos corredores
Com asas de ferro e chumbo,
Caídos nas águas fundas,
não quero cantar amores.

Paraísos proibidos,
Contentamentos injustos,
Feliz adversidade,
Amores são passos perdidos.

São demências dos olhares,
Alegre festa de pranto,
São furor obediente,
São frios raios solares.

Dá má sorte defendidos
Os homens de bom juízo
Têm nas mãos prodigiosas
Verdes garras dos sentidos.

Não quero cantar amores
Nem falar dos seus motivos.



***


GANA
Homesick (Ama Ata Aidoo)

This afternoon,
I bolted from
the fishmarket:


my eyes smarting with shame
at how too willingly and sheepishly
my memory had slipped up
after the loss of my taste buds.


- Just like an insecure politician creaming up
to his boss.


Familiarly in an unfamiliar land,
so strong and so sweetly strong,
the smells of the fish of
my childhood hit hard and soft,
wickedly musky.


All else fall into focus
except the names of the fish.


While from distant places in my head
The Atlantic booms and roars or
calmly creeps swishing foam on the hot sand.


But I could not remember their Fantse names.


They were labeled clearly enough
- in English -
which
tragically
brought no echoes…


One terrifying truth
unveiled in one short afternoon:


that
exile brings losses like
forgetting to remember
ordinary things.


Mother,
when next we meet,
I shall first bring you
your truthspeaker’s stone:


the names and tastes of fish are also
simple keys to unlock
secret sacred doors.


And I wail to foreign far away winds:


Daughter of My Mother and My Father’s Orphan,
what is to become of me?


And Those like me?