The Poet Makes it to Seventy
Adriano Espínola
translation by Charles A. Perrone
For Paulo Henriques Britto, Geraldo Carneiro and Antonio Carlos Secchin
Somewhat nonchalantly
do I turn the corner,
a bit more inclined,
of 70.
(Feast of wild wolves,
of crazy years gone by
spent quietly on the sly).
Someone soon draws closer
and presses on my chest;
an other from me
comes loose to stay silent.
Who are they, I inquire,
my body right next
to the blank wall and spire,
who divide me
thusly in two,
between dreams of what I was and
the unforeseeable awakened state
of what comes later?
And now I know:
old friends' shades, hello!
do come light up
my ancient
temples
and the gestures and signals
that I emit in passage!
I exclaim, expectant,
without nostalgia or grief,
upon safe arrival
from the pandemic
and this voyage through time,
castaway from love
and failures,
by the dock and reef
of my own step-filled mime.
Who, I go on to ask them,
invents me
every second
each and every day
upon turning the corner
of 70?
A sudden shade obstinately
comes forward to illuminate me.
And it is Nobody.
And it's Odysseus with his sword.
Portuguese explorer and native shaman
in combat on a beach
in the past, beyond reach.
Steel, stories, and struggles
in the preterite
(that belong to me as well)
now traversing me,
there by that wall
with the present's flat scrawl,
memory of the future.
And now I'm already myself,
I who am naught,
sad creature so content,
weaver of the art of deceit
(that is poetry,
that strangest of arts
of prodigal amazements),
like a blind man
on a sidewalk,
touching aside apart,
where I am passing by
and where I shall always go.
And I arrive
by dint of some
arcane mischief
at the corner of
these unexpected years,
being what I am:
a common man,
spinning flesh and earth
of fateful chance,
70 times in one.
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