Carlito Azevedo is a poet, editor, and translator born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1961. He edited for more than ten years the magazine Inimigo Rumor and translated into Portuguese the poetry of Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob, and Henri Michaux, in addition to the prose of Gustave Flaubert and César Aira. He won the Jabuti Prize for Collapsus linguae and the Alphonsus de Guimarães Prize of the National Library of Brazil for his anthology Sublunar. He also published, in poetry, As banhistas and Sob a noite física. In our country, Kriller 71 Ediciones published in 2015 his book Monodrama. We present a selection of poems with translation by Aníbal Cristobo.
***
The Boxing Angel Tries to Describe a Scene
1.
A young man draws circles with the smoke
from his cigarette
and lies down
on the floor
reading a book
Opposite him there is another young man who
also draws circles with the smoke
from his cigarette
and also lies down
on the floor
reading a book
The first one has his knees raised
and between his knees
in the air
he holds the front wheel of a bicycle
The second one also has his knees raised
and between his knees
in the air
he holds the rear wheel of a bicycle
While microscopic life
settles as it can and
according to its own laws
the two youths
continue reading and
drawing circles
with the smoke
from the cigarettes
which, by the way
disguises poorly
the considerable effort
of sustaining a bicycle
between their knees
2.
Above all because
mounted on the bicycle
suspended in the air
she pedals
carried away by enthusiasm
a girl
eight years old
who is running away from home
with all the simplicity
and all the spasms
is running away from home
with all her sex
and every morning
she is running away from home
with all her strength
and all the mountains
3.
Let us add now that
the room where this scene takes place
is entirely black
with a thick, bituminous blackness
of tar
which gives to the smoke circles
produced by the lying youths
a luminous look
not as luminous
yet
when the face
of her
meanwhile
taken by a frantic
enthusiasm
she pedals and
speaks
without stopping
pedals
stopped
and without stopping
4.
At this moment
the boxing angel
stops describing
the scene he is
witnessing
and thinks that if any part of us
survives the end
of the reed
thinking
remote hypothesis
yes
though indeed a hypothesis
though indeed remote
then the boxing angel
promises himself
in that improbable
hypothesis
to exhaust all the
possibilities
of smuggling
in the hour of death
and into death
belying
the brainwashing
of paradise
some thing
some
more minimal
thing
of that girl
the smile
the color of her eyes
the shape of
her little boots
***
About a Photonovel by Juan Nepomuceno
The broken-down car beside the thorny brush
after skidding, here is the circumstance.
But
-it is clear-
there was a love making
The back seat, the cloud of
cognac and marijuana from which they emerged,
illuminated, sepia, the faces of K. and
the young Indian girl.
“Strange that all this does not
seem like a nightmare,” Aníbal said, “with
so much moon, the world music of the animals at
the edge of the road.”
But the poem kept growing,
like the rust on the sharp thorn tips of the
bodywork, next to the thorn bush,
after skidding.
***
I am talking about sunny days,
I am talking about dark days, that is,
I am talking about flowers, yes, from the backs
of books, therefore, of golden engravings, it is
that is, about children playing and swimming in the water,
about the flood, about burning the letters of the famous writer,
about the smoke rising and leaving that stain
on the ceiling, I am not talking about the Berkeley hills
but about the Puerto Rican pizza delivery people in
Berkeley, about the Hungarian pizza deliverers in
Santiago, one might say about books that do not open, about
doors that do not open, about dreams that do not,
about a recurring nightmare, about resin,
about a horse running, not books of sand.
***
Pale Abyssal Sky that does not protect us,
it is, rather, a accomplice, or intellectual mentor
to those ruins,
to our mutilated minds.
As we pass by certain suburban houses and streets, it sometimes happens
that we encounter something
that shines dazzlingly and asymmetrically,
and moves us to the point where we ask ourselves
whether from its scandalous appearance, its luminous tail
of atoms and void,
could arise one day
neatly dressed girls in dresses
of flowers, leading well-groomed children
to the Municipal School,
the Municipal Dream.
I stopped one day in one of those
plazas and, lying on the
grass, I began to listen to the absolute disconnection of
all the world’s languages, of all the world’s dreams.
When I rose to seek
a little water in the empty tank I saw (face to face)
a rat that even there reminded me of
Debra Wingers
abandoned in the desert.