Rui Cóias was born in Lisbon, Portugal. He is graduated in Law from the University of Coimbra, has a postgraduate degree in Legal Sciences. He is the author of the books The Function of the Geographer and The Order of the World. In 2016 was published in Portugal his last collection of poems: Europa, that includes, among others, a series of texts based on the Great War 1914-18, written in the occasion of a fellowship awarded by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. This book was recently published in Mexico (Las Margenes Sombrias) and in Holland (Laat de stilte) with translations to spanish and dutch. Rui Cóias is also published in Belgium (La Nature de la Vie) and in France (L`ordre du monde). He has also published in several anthologies and publications in Portugal, Slovakia, Italy, Romania, Macedonia and Brazil. He has also presented his work in Switzerland, France, the United States, India and Turkey and represented Portugal in several important festivals and literary meetings around the world. He is also part of the Portuguese authors that integrate the web platforms: Poetry International Web (Rotterdam), Poems from the Portuguese (Portugal) and Lyricline (Germany). He has a travel and literature blog, and lives in Lisbon.
Places don’t exist, never existed, not even the ancient ones.
What exists is what we see in them, the brick dust traces making them vanish.
Only thus we’ll land. Lightly, just for the remembrance.
Not in order to touch the lilac columns or go across on the tangerine sailing boat.
Only vaguely we progress. We don’t walk under the sun.
The nomads’ feet are not blackened by the sand and the sea in small ports.
The elms shelter us, not the terraces.
The dust traces bruise us with a faint drop
we can wile between our fingers and still it doesn’t solidify.
Nothing has changed since the first lament ; the eyes
taking us along the Mediterranean horizon are our eyes,
and the olive trees its day-long boundary.
© Translation: Ana Hudson
Não há lugares, nunca houve, nem mesmo antigos.
Há o que olhamos neles, a sua marca de pó de tijolo que os faz sumir.
Só assim conseguimos chegar. Só brandamente, para lembrarmos.
Não para tocar as colunas liláses ou fazer a travessia no veleiro das tangerinas.
Só vagamente andamos. Não caminhamos, debaixo do sol.
Os pés dos nómadas não enegrecem com as areias e as águas de pequenos portos.
São os ulmeiros que nos protegem e não os seus terraços.
A marca de pó fere-nos numa gota desmaiada,
podemos entretê-la mesmo entre os dedos que não petrefica.
Nada mudou desde o primeiro queixume ; foi
com os olhos que partimos na linha do Mediterrâneo
e são as oliveiras o seu diurno limite.
The voices are gone.
They flew from the terrace and left us alone.
Men are scared of pining on their own.
So they listen to prodigious stories about one another.
Thus they endure failed loves,
loves mirrored on their faces like a bunch of grapes.
Men are lost,
they stand desolate and caged
in fear of the night.
They won’t recline again on the white weariness of youth.
They clasp golden rosaries in their hands
under the porches
allowing the passing women to stare,
supercilious.
At the close of night,
they languish in the heat of the terraces,
listening in silence to Kavafis’ poems.
At the close of night,
women fall utterly in love with them
and offer their souls in exchange for shelter.
© Translation: Ana Hudson
As vozes partiram.
Voaram para fora do terraço deixando-os sós.
Os homens têm medo de chorar sozinhos.
Por isso escutam as histórias prodigiosas uns dos outros.
Assim toleram o amor falhado,
o amor flectindo na face como cachos de uvas.
Os homens perderam-se,
ficaram desamparados e retidos
com medo da noite.
Não voltarão a estender-se no cansaço branco da juventude.
Apertam nas mãos rosários de oiro
sob os alpendres
e deixam-se fitar pelas mulheres que passam
altivamente.
Ao fim da noite
adoecem no calor dos terraços,
escutam em silêncio os poemas de Kavafis.
Ao fim da noite,
as mulheres apaixonam-se perdidamente por eles
e dão-lhes as almas para que as protejam.
Poetry in this post: © Rui Cóias
Published with the permission of Rui Cóias