Poetry 2: Sophia de Mello Breyner

[wildestranger]

Today's poem is by a twentieth-century Portuguese woman, Sophia de Mello Breyner. I encountered her poems in Lisbon last year - there is one engraved into a bench at the Lisbon Castle, overlooking the city - and they are glorious and worth checking out. I will no doubt post more from her this month.


Sophia de Mello Breyner, ‘I Listen’

Escuto mas não sei
Se o que oiço é silêncio
Ou deus

Escuto sem saber se estou ouvindo
O ressoar das planícies do vazio
Ou a consciência atenta
Que nos confines do universo
Me decifra e fita

Apenas sei que caminho como quem
É olhado amado e conhecido
E pos isso em cada gesto ponho
Solenidade e risco


I listen without knowing
If what hear is silence
Or god

I listen but don’t know if I’m hearing
The echo of the empty expanses
Or the attentive consciousness
Which from the edge of the universe
Sees and deciphers me

I know only that I walk as one
Who is watched loved and known
And that’s why I place in the smallest act
Solemnity and risk

Trans. by Richard Zenith