We at the Cátedra Natália Correia from PBBI-Fresno State continue to feature this weekly segment where we take a poem or an excerpt from a writing from Natália Correia and bring it to our readers in English translation.

the refusal of the evident images  IV

There are nights that are made of my arms

And a silence common to violets.

And there are seven moons that are seven traces

Of seven nights that were never made.

There are nights that we carry around our waist

Like a belt of great butterflies.

And a blood streak in our dark flesh

Like a sword in a comet’s hem.

There are nights that leave us behind

Curled up in our disenchantment

And white swans that are only equal

To the farthest wave of their song.

There are nights that take us where

The ghost within us is closest;

And it is always our voice that answers

And only our name was right.

There are nights that are lilies and are beasts

And the accuracy of our vile rose

Reconciles in the cold of the spheres

The stars that look at each other in silhouette.

Poem from Natália Correia, translated to English by Diniz Borges