When Azorean poetry speaks again, in another tongue
VERTICAL SILENCE BY j.h. BORGES MARTINS
A city embedded in the vertical
space of my exile, where
there is no volatile ticking of minutes
and the mechanical noise of cars.
Anchor in the path of words, far
from hands
parched
harvesting the hot impression of the
delirious afternoons in the amplex of
the corners.
The madness of the birds stops;
people vegetate towards the sea
and return with bodies of shadow and
cement embalmed in the roots of the plow.
The city is
the silence of a deadliner with no message.
Translated by Diniz Borges
Photo from Passeio dos Poetas, Praia da Vitória, in: https://vanderkrogt.net/statues/object.php?webpage=ST&record=ptac135
Across the wide Atlantic, the sea carries more than tides — it carries the whispered dreams of islands. The Second Voice of the Sea gathers the poetry of the Azores and releases it anew in English, so each verse may breathe again in another tongue. Through the alchemy of translation, this Filamentos project from Bruma Publications at the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute, Fresno State, preserves the winds, the salt, and the saudade of the archipelago, offering them to readers far from its shores. Here, the ocean becomes a page, and the page, an endless sea.
This project is sponsored by the Luso-American Education Foundation.
Filamentos (artes e letras) 