Carlos Ávila (Brazil) 1955

Carlos Ávila (Brazil)

1955

 

Born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais in 1955, Carlos Ávila is a poet and journalist. He edited and participated in several avant-garde journals. He is the son of the noted Brazilian poets Afonso Ávila and Laís Correa do Araujo, both linked to the concretism movement of Brazil.

     Ávila’s poetry publications include the books Acqui & Agora (1981), Sinal de Menos (1989), Asperos (1990), and Bissexto Sentido of 1999. He continues also to publish essays in journals and newspapers in Brazil and abroad. From 1995-1999 Ávila edited the Suplemmento Literário de Minas Gerais, a monthly newspaper of poetry.

 

BOOKS OF POETRY

 

Acqui & Agora (1981); Sinal de Menos (1989); Asperos (1990); Bissexto Sentido (São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 1999; Publicou também um livro de ensaios - Poesia Pensada (RJ, 7Letras, 2004); e Obstáculos (BH, Memória Gráfica, 2004)

 

 

Baudelaire Answer

 

The sun

(awaiting an adjective;

im-pla-ca-ble)

bleached the cover

of a volume of baudelaire

 

the flowers of evil

(I discover)

cannot resist the sun's

slow violence

(sun of the backlands' mouth

That blasts the land dry?)

 

Besides,

who had

the shelf

put there:

what would baudelaire

(in graphic effigy)

be doing in the backlands?

 

if the flowers of evil

can't stand the sun

(answers baudelaire)

How could they resist the thrusts

Of salt and rust?

 

—Translated from the Portuguese by Regina Alfarano

 

(previously unpublished)

 

 

 

Narcissus Poeticus

 

dried up

 

(in a waterless

vase)

 

ill planted

in a (tiny)

waste land

of the dim apartment:

how to resist

dust dirt pollution?

 

mistreated ex-narcissus

abandoned to its fate

(flat on the floor)

without well

or mirror

 

dried up

(alone in the vase)

without sweat or saliva

or tears

to save it

 

died

(soot

on its soul)

 

—Translated from the Portuguese by Regina Alfarano

 

(previously unpublished)

 

_____

Poems copyright ©2003 by Carlos Ávila. English language translation copyright ©2003 by Regina Alfarano.

Reprinted from The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century, Volume 3: Nothing the Sun Could Not Explain—20 Contemporary Brazilian Poets (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2003).