Summer Day - Tom Thompson / WikiArt

From When I’m Not Around (Quando não estou por perto).

to write by chance the whiteness
the outline of the glass modulating
the whiteness of the sky to write like one who
writes down a message quick
letters spelling out a name
glass fogged by sea mist
little plant that grows between the wet
shingles write down what I say but quick
the voice has an accent quick or
slow I don’t really know the name
where from an accent I don’t remember
makes no sense always the
same names by chance
I write the outline modulating see
hue of whiteness stretching
here write quickly what
I say between the shingles in spring
around this time I usually don’t recognize
this accent where this way of
dragging out the “r” I think
around this time this little plant the branches
usually I write more quickly
the outline right away dissolves and
lies among the shingles infiltration of the days
an automatic reflection in this
speaking about death and immediately
looking at one’s watch

 

There is a kind of automatic reflection in this:
speaking about death and, immediately, looking at one’s watch.
Mario Benedetti

Annita Costa Malufe
Annita Costa Malufe is the author of seven books of poetry namely, Alguém que dorme na plateia vazia (Someone Who Sleeps in the Empty Audience), Um caderno para coisas práticas (A Notebook for Practical Things), Quando não estou por perto (When I'm Not Around,), Como se caísse devagar (As if Falling Slowly), Nesta cidade e abaixo de teus olhos (In this City and Below Your Eyes), and Fundos para dias de chuva (Backgrounds for Rainy Days). She is also the author of two books of essays: Dispersed Territories: The Poetics of Ana Cristina Cesar and Poetics of Immanence: Ana Cristina Cesar and Marcos Siscar, both with funding from the São Paulo Research Foundation. She is currently a researcher at the University of Salamanca. In Brazil, she is a Productivity in Research scholar at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and teaches in the graduate program of Literature and Literary Criticism at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). 

Janet Hendrickson
Janet Hendrickson translates from Spanish and Portuguese to English. Her experimental translation of Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language (New Directions, 2019), which turns a 1611 dictionary by Sebastián de Covarrubias into a series of prose poems, was longlisted for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She also translated The Future Is Not Ours (ed. Diego Trelles Paz, Open Letter, 2012), a generation-defining anthology of new Latin American fiction. She teaches writing and translation in Liberal Studies at NYU.