Happy Birthday, Paulo Leminski!

Source: Rodrigolmf123, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In the second post ever on this blog, I took a stab at two different translations of a Leminski poem from “Polonaises,” one focusing on content and the other on rhyme. Today, in honor of what would have been his 78th birthday, I try to capture the visual aspect that was so important for this concretism-inspired poet. This is from “sol-te” (“solte” is the command “let go” but broken up the way Leminski does in the title, the two parts translate as “sun” and “you”), which appeared in 1983’s “Caprichos e Relaxos” (“Whims and Relaxes”). (The first half below is Leminski’s; the second half mine.)

eu
tão isósceles
você
ângulo
hipóteses
sobre meu tesão

teses
sínteses
antíteses
vê bem onde pises
pode ser meu coração

I
so isosceles
you
angle
hypothesis
on top of my lust

thesis
synthesis
an antithesis
watch your step
that could be my heart