With passion I do
I battle
I undertake my excesses

I stab my heart
I poison
my widely open chest

Passion is my
certain fate
my end and my beginning

To die of love
and of loving
is a death that I deserve

© Translated by Ana Hudson, 2013

Paixão

Com a paixão faço
e armo
a construir-me no excesso

Apunhalo o coração
enveneno
o peito aberto

A paixão é meu
destino
meu final e meu começo

Morrer de amor
e de amar
é a morte que eu mereço

inédito

Portuguese

If the tongue gains
the dimension of writing
and writing takes on
the dimensions of the world

We must go deep
searching saliva’s roots
in the mouth where all is mixed

And there’s still the paper’s haste
its touch steering rough silk
Even if under the skin the disguised thirst
streams through the trail of words

And already it creates
Envelops
Insinuates

Interlaces the spindle with the stitch
as the words weave
along the line
wanting the country’s naked soul

There you can halt
and return to the mouth
That space for the kiss and the chisel

Where the voice reclaims the whole language
exchanging tenderness
for bile

First one side then the other
the scale is settled
Time fusing the embrace
between what is seen and written

Mirror and steel
In this pleasing depth
the sea unfolds

Then with effort lifts up
The world

© Translated by Ana Hudson, 2010

Português

Se a língua ganha
a dimensão da escrita
E a escrita toma
a dimensão do mundo

Descer é preciso até ao fundo
na busca das raízes da saliva
que na boca vão misturar tudo

Mas há ainda a pressa do papel
que no tacto navega a brusca seda
Se a sede se disfarça sob a pele
descendo pela escrita essa vereda

E já se inventa
Enlaça
Ou se insinua

Se entrelaça a roca e o bordado
que as palavras tecendo
lado a lado
querem do país a alma nua

Aí podes parar
e retornar à boca
Esse espaço de beijo e de cinzel

Onde a fala retoma a língua toda
trocando a ternura
por fel

Um lado após o outro
a dimensão está dita
O tempo a confundir qualquer abraço
entre o visto e o escrito

Espelho e aço
Nesta fundura boa
e mar profundo

Para depois subir a pulso
O mundo

in Inquietude, 2006

Maria Teresa Horta’s poetry doesn’t come from quietude, nor does it provoke it; the reader will have to experience its burning, for its body advances like a hallucinating living force that simultaneously retreats into its origin. One might conceive her poems as cosmic matter, an erotic and circular route within the blood system, the bleeding rose opening at times into the multiple petals of a baroque metaphor.

Ana Marques Gastão

Maria Teresa Horta was born in Lisbon. After finishing a degree in literature at the University of Lisbon, she became a journalist and later became a prominent frontrunner in the Portuguese feminist movement. She wrote for several newspapers and magazines. She published her first poetry book in 1960, followed by many others, and several works of fiction and drama. She sadly died in February 2025.

Poetry books since 2000: Inquietude (2006), Poesia Reunida (which includes 18 poetry books) (2009), A Dama e o Unicórnio (2013), Anunciações (2016), Poesis (2017), Estranhezas (2018) e a antologia Eu sou a Minha Poesia (2019).

From: Poems from the Portuguese

https://poemsfromtheportuguese.org/category/maria-teresa-horta/