Two Poems by António Reis
António Reis, 1957
Translated by Miguel Cardoso
António Reis published Poemas Quotidianos (Daily Poems) in 1957. A second book, Novos Poemas Quotidianos (New Daily Poems), followed in 1960. The two poems below originate from these collections.
In 1992, the year after Reis’ death, journalist and writer Manuel António Pina penned a recollection of the poetry movements in the city of Porto in the 1950s, of which Reis was one of the central figures:
“We carried the ‘Daily Poems’ in our pockets and shared them greedily, in the cafés and on the long, lonely nights of adolescence, like a common fire, a sign that identified us to each other as members of the same wandering tribe; we were all young, or thought we were, and we believed, in those controversial times, that we had been given the gift of understanding and changing the world and life through poetry. António Reis did not know it, but all the words we had at the time were his.”
Joaquim Pinto, later a student of Reis at the Film School in Lisbon, recalls the “young poet I heard about in my childhood in Porto.”
Thank you to Miguel Cardoso for these translations, and to Raquel Morais for permission to reprint here. They are included in the new print publication In the Midst of the End of the World: António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro along with many other texts by and about Reis/Cordeiro appearing in English for the first time.
I too shall go into the
houses
As silence does
To look at the portraits of the dead
on the walls
a fireman a young boy
To look at the monogrammed sheets
The mended dresses
The dyed over dresses
The certificates of honor
The bell jars
And the Mutual and Funeral Services Aid
log book vouchers
long overdue
I too shall go into the
houses
as moonlight does
To see how the underclothing and bedlinen are
missing pieces
faces fraught
by unpaid electricity and water bills
the petrol heater
turned off newspapers over the walls
and a bird on the balcony
singing
beside a flower
xx
Tonight we move
And I wonder
As you do about the wood-burning stove
and the mattresses
how we’ll carry the plants
and disguise the shabby furniture
Tonight we move
unaware that the dead
still live here
and our children forever sleep
in the bedrooms they were born
Go down ahead
Give me a moment to hear my own footsteps
in these empty rooms
xx
Translation: Miguel Cardoso
From: Poemas Quotidianos
Publisher: Tinta da China
