Language: Mozambican Portuguese
Poet: Melita Matsinhe
Translator: Beth Hickling-Moore
Region: Mozambique
SHARE:
I live enslaved to silk
Four poems by Melita Matsinhe, translated from Mozambican Portuguese by Beth Hickling-Moore
Melita Matsinhe is an artist, poet and musician from Mozambique. She studied music in Havana, where she deepened her sense for aesthetics, dance and poetry, exploring ideas such as religion and divinity. Ignição dos sonhos [Igniting Dreams] is her first collection of poetry, and was published in 2017.
Beth Hickling-Moore is a teacher and a translator of Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian into English. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Modern Poetry in Translation and The Hooghly Review. Her first full-length novel in translation (from Italian) will be published in September 2024.
Borbolivre
Hoje em casulo
livre, amanhã,
mariposa e feliz.
Vivo escravo da seda
de correctos finais
em pública agonia
Na escuridão de larva
borbolivre vivo
Meu sonho aprisionado.
Unfetteredby
Cocooned today
free, tomorrow,
gleeful moth.
I live enslaved to silk
for correct ends
in public throes
In larval darkness
I live unfetteredby
my dream imprisoned.
Tambor
Salvas vidas,
não páres, tambor,
sístole e diástole,
pele do som,
carne do mundo.
Não páres de bater,
tambor.
Oh Drum
Salvage lives,
no stopping, oh drum,
systole and diastole,
sound in skin,
the world’s carnal flesh.
No stopping your drumming,
oh drum.
Coreografia dos sonhos
Rios verticais sulcando-me o peito
sob as estrelas
golpeiam o solo em doloroso destino
e tu danças
apagando sinas, decretos, contratos,
por dentro da gravidade da terra!
Choreography Dreaming
Vertical rivers furrowing my chest
under the starlight
thumping the dirt in doleful destiny
and you’re dancing
snuffing out fortunes, decrees, contracts,
from inside of earth’s gravity!
Renegado
Não te alarmes:
tácitas lágrimas
irreverentes
muralhas abaixo.
Leito, lençóis em chuva.
Quarto, casa desfeitos
em largos rios infinitos
não temas
és tu!
Renegade
Don’t be alarmed:
silent tears
scornful
walls fall down.
A bed, sheets in the rain.
A room, a house undone
in infinite rivers so long
do not fear,
it’s you!
