The frozen food aisle by Rui Pires Cabral translated by Ana Hudson
Truncated, undefined, short
stories of carnal love pass
in the mind like silent
movies. The nightly swollen river
always spreads over the salty flat
afternoon: January flakes the paint
off walls, into the streets we take
a more sullen face and then down
the frozen food aisle, we can’t tell
what we feel beyond the cold that
imprisons all things: we walk alone
in a private wood, we summon
shadows that have become nameless,
signs that no longer carry
an automatic feel for desire
or pain. Yet, despite the certainties
we wouldn’t have wished to have,
we always end up going back
to the same streets, to the sleeplessly
immense night where it hurts to find out,
in other people’s company,
how solitude lays claim on us.
© Translated by Ana Hudson, 2011
It is no overstatement to say that Rui Pires Cabral is the author of some of the most beautiful Portuguese poems written in the last decade. Starting often from small everyday themes, his poetry reaches an unusual lyrical intensity by evoking a fluid and hidden geography capable of wandering through cities, memories or songs. He has a voice very much his own – a concise writing in which melancholy, uncertainty and irony achieve a balance that produces rare images and surprising effects.
Vítor Nogueira
Rui Pires Cabral was born in Macedo de Cavaleiros, a small town in north east Portugal. He read History and Archaeology at Porto University. He lives in Lisbon and works mainly as a translator.
You can read all of the poems trasnlated and all of the poets in this ecellent site here: