NAMES

    by the Portuguese poet Eugénio de Andrade, in Memory of Another River (1976)

    Names

    Your mother give you little names,
    as if the tide brought them with the periwinkles.
    She would have liked to call you tributary-of-June,
    purple-where-the-night-washes-itself,
    white-slope-of-wheat,
    all this in a just a single syllable.
    Only she knew how to make it all work out,
    my-litlle-silvery-bay-pony-to-hang-upon-one´s-breast.

    Nomes

    Tua mãe dava-te nomes pequenos,
    como se a maré os trouxesse com os caramujos.
    Ela queria chamar-te afluente-de-junho,
    púrpura-onde-a-noite-se-lava,
    branca-vertente-do-trigo,
    tudo isto apenas numa sílaba.
    Só ela sabia como se arranjava para o conseguir,
    meu baiozinho-de-prata-para-pôr-ao-peito.

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