Darpan || Maria do Sameiro Barroso (Portugal)

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পোস্ট বার দেখা হয়েছে

Maria do Sameiro Barroso 

(Portugal)

NOVEMBER

     Here is another way to perish, after the Summer, the truce. Like a poem written in November, this is how I feel now. The horses are coming near. They're always the same, strolling by the sea. They come closer fiercely and vanish in the air.

     This is a long and sad story, a wonder that comes true, a foam arising and disappearing in this old and renewed history, in this never repeated feeling.

     That's how you die. Or how you live in another way. This is how an Autumn cycle of cyclamens comes to an end. I put my clothes on in my pain, dress, my hands holding roses,  clovers and linden flowers. Some day, the darkness will come to an end.

     When another wind arises.

BOATERS

     The boatmen of death get drunk with pomegranate wine, decipher the landscapes, cross the borders of the worlds, know about the sap, the lyres that touch the bodies, the birds that fly in their green forests, among wild orchids , shattered walls and ruined words.

The boatmen arrive by its banks. The Styx is his abode. They seem to be the owners of time. They know about the secret journeys, the sands, the swamps, the fears and the ashes of destiny. With them I return to the ancient altars of gods and serpents, to you, to silence, to the challenges of time.

     The boatmen have always attracted me, like Orpheus flourishing in the melodies of the land. With them I delve into the mist, into you and into the poetry that was always the language of the boatmen, of Orpheus ndo f death, na unstable place where the night suffocates in its epidemics of silence, where the transformation of bodies brings me rottenness, mud and seagulls, strange liquors and unexpected and purifying perfumes.

PENELOPE

     Penelope was a happy woman, after all. She knew why she was embroidering. Her eyes were like carpets, gardens she wove to deceive the suitors who besieged her, faithful to Ulysses and the embroideries she unravelled at dawn.

     I was also faithful, but I wasn't happy. I viewed myself in Penelope. Every night, I would undo my fabrics. I didn't know why I was embroidering. Nor who I was deceiving. I was weaving and unweaving my dream and my truth, staring at myself in my mirrors.   

     The dead leaves were bringing me blue images, spectres and oblivions.

The world wasn't an objective matter. Not a cloud, a bird or a poem. My clocks were sinking in grey skies and yellow waters. At night, the ashes of my days were also dropping. My rugs, wool fabrics, and stars were torn apart like my verses, wounded in the morning light.

_______________________

Biography

Maria do Sameiro Barroso (Portugal) is a medical doctor and a multilingual and awarded poet, translator, essayist and researcher in Portuguese and German Literature, translations studies and History of Medicine. She has authored over 40 books of poetry, published in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, France, Serbia, Turkey, Belgium, Albany, USA, and translations and books of essays. Her poems are represented in over a hundred national and international magazines and anthologies, published in more than thirty languages, resulting from his participation in poetry festivals and international activities. She was Vice-President of the Portuguese PEN Centre (2012-2014).