from Vol. #9, Issue 1: Spring 2018
by Cesário Verde, translated from Portuguese by Paul Rowe

Feeling of a Westerner

I. Vespers

When night descends upon our streets
and melancholy fills the air,
The Tagus, boredom, shifting shades—
They make me long to suffer pain.

The sky hangs low in hazy fog;
The gas from streetlights makes me sick;
The whirl of buildings, chimneys, crowds
Besmeared with London's murky hues.

Happy travelers crammed in coaches
Now scurry off to catch the train.
The countries all blur past: Madrid,
Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg—the world!

Timber frames of future buildings
Recall the cruelty of the cage,
While carpenters, like plunging bats,
leap beam to beam to tolling bells.

Herds of hardened, unkempt caulkers
Return from dreary docks in droves.
I brood in alleys by the river
Or walk by wharves where boats are moored.

Rekindled ocean chronicles:
The Moors, the ships, heroes—revived!
Book of Camões washed ashore…
Those mighty ships, they flee my gaze!

Twilight moves me, yet disturbs!
An English ship casts out its cutters;
On land the clink of cutlery
Reverberates in chic hotels.

Dentists squabble in a streetcar;
A clumsy clown wobbles on stilts;
Children—cherubs on balconies;
Hatless shopkeepers lean in doorways.

Shipyards, workshops all clear out;
The Tagus glimmers, workers hasten;
Hidden schools of Herculean fishwives
Emerge from shadows with their laughter.

Bursting forth with sumptuous hips! Their
Manly frames remind me of pillars;
And some, in baskets on their heads,
Hold sons who later drown in storms.

Barefoot, unloading coal from ships
Dawn to dusk, they gather at night
In neighborhoods afoul with meows
And rotting fish that breed infection!

II. After Dark

Prisoners bang on bars in chains—
The sound, it mortifies with shame!
The Aljube prison, for crones and children,
Rarely ensnares a noble lady!

It feels so macabre when the lights flash on
I suspect to suffer aneurysm;
The sight of prisons, churches, crosses
Numbs and sinks my heart with tears.

Floor after floor, the rooms light up,
From cafes, taverns, tobacco shops,
The glare spreads out—a pale sheet,
The moon glows like a circus show.

Two ancient churches spill their stains
Of death out in the ancient square
Where I sketch a stern inquisitor
And dare to enter history.

In the part of town the earthquake struck
Imposing buildings wall me in,
While elsewhere sloping streets confound—
The solemn din of pious bells.

Over a meager public square
With lovers' benches, pepper trees,
A monument all cast in bronze:
A pillar to enshrine the epic.

I dream of doom—of Cholera,
among this throng of walking dead;
Soldiers flit like somber specters;
A glittering palace looks out on a pigsty.

Mounted soldiers march through archways
Of barracks that were once convents:
The Middle Ages! Others, on foot,
Frozen, pour out in the streets.

Sad city! I fear you'll rouse dead dreams!
Your stylish ladies—a mournful sight!
So pale, alone in lamp-lit evening,
Lusting at the jewelers' panes.

What's more, seamstresses and florists
Swarm from shops to startle me,
All hardly able to lift their heads,
Actresses and chorus girls.

It's through these tawdry human scenes
My spectacles find subject matter:
Inside the pub, at dim-lit tables,
Migrants play their dominos.

III. By Gaslight

I go back out. The night's weight crushes.
The sidewalk full of tarnished women.
Weary clinics! Shoulders shiver
From drafts out in these empty streets.

Warm shops engulf me. I think I see
Glittering candles, rows of chapels,
With saints and sinners, flowers, flickers—
More saints in the immense cathedral.

The bourgeois Catholic women trip
On ground littered with gutters, pipes,
Reminding me, with moaning pianos,
Of fasting nuns who died of madness.

An aproned knife-maker works his lathe,
Wielding his scalding smithing hammer,
And from an oven, still-warm bread
Exhales an honest, welcome scent.

And I, who crave a book that burns
Seek my subject from this world.
Boutique shops glimmer with fashion,
A vagrant stares at posh displays.

O long descents! Could I but paint
With sincere, magisterial verse
Your transmissions from the streetlamps,
Your romantic, moonlit pallor!

That seductive, corseted creature
Selecting shawls moves like a snake!
Her splendidness: a magnet for
Finery piled on russet counters.

And that old hag with coiled tresses!
Her train with slender two-tone stripes
Looks like a fan! Her horses pawing
Patiently upon the pavement.

Flowers wilt on tabletops
In Oriental fabric shops;
Flakes of powder choke the air;
Clerks bow and grin through satin smoke.

All grows tired! Slowly, like stars,
The hanging lights of storefronts dim;
A lone hoarse voice sells raffle tickets;
Gleaming buildings—mausoleums.

“Please, sir! Take pity!”
Cries a corner dweller when I pass,
A small old teacher begs for alms:
The one from school who taught me Latin!

IV. The Dead Hours

Topless heights of filthy ether
Float between the stagnant roofs,
Worn eyes of stars weep tears of light,
Blue dreams of transmigration drape me.

Below the sky, what doors and streets!
In the dark, I hear a clamor—
Clattering shutters, clicking locks;
Bloodshot eyes of horrid cabs.

Like lines upon a music staff,
I trace the rows of glum facades,
Breaking my calm a warning warbles—
Distant notes from pastoral flutes.

O, to never die! If immortal
I'd chase and seize perfected things!
I lose myself in dreams of wives
Who purely rest in homes of glass!

O children! What fragile trance
Will bring crisp vision to your lives!
I want your women all to live
In fragile, limpid nests of glass!

Ah! Like florid future children,
And grandfathers' fleets on far-off seas,
We shall explore all continents,
and sail across this broad expanse!

But how—if we live crushed
Within dark valleys between walls?
I sense the razors in the dark,
I hear the strangled cries for help!

And in these hazy corridors
I peer in taverns—I am appalled.
Some sorry drunks who stagger home
Together sing of former glories.

I do not fear of being robbed;
The dubious drunkards drift away;
The dirty, bony dogs don't bark,
resembling scrawny, fevered wolves.

The watchmen here, who keep the keys,
They walk by entryways with lights,
While lustful women in light robes
Smoke and cough from balconies.

And in a twisted looming mass
Of dark sepulchral buildings—
Vile seas of human pain
Seek vast horizons for their tides.

>> read the Portuguese text of this poem
>> read the translator's note

About the author: Cesário Verde (1855 – 1886) was a Portuguese poet, largely ignored during his lifetime but championed after his death by authors including Fernando Pessoa.

About the translator: Paul S. Rowe (@paulsrowe) is an adjunct Lecturer in English at Suffolk University and co-editor of The Charles River Journal. His critical essays, book reviews, poems, and interviews appear in Literary Imagination, The New England Review of Books, Berfrois, and Hollow. Paul is an aspiring Romanticist embroiled in the process of a Ph.D. in literature.

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