Renata Correia

[Renata Correia Botelho]

we fail in everything: we placed

the books in the tomb of

the shelves, we gave

love a lap of true hours,

we stopped opening

windows so we could smell the night.

yet nothing reminds us

that the poem is only made up

on the razor's edge.

[Um Circo no Nevoeiro, 2009]

you who saw fjords and corals,

who came from the underground words

and from what remains

to be said, you who learnt the silence

in several languages and one day tossed

a coin to cheat

death, how many more verbs

do you want to wander

this useless narrative?

[Um Circo no Nevoeiro, 2009]

god in the lilies

for my mother

I feel god, every night, in Monet's lilies.

they look after me,

after this uncertain shadow that dies

little by little with me, they cover

the dark house with alive sap

and remove the demons

that hide in the cracks of dreams.

in the morning, I gather the tender petals

fallen on the sheet, and pray quietly,

with the birds, a blank verse.

[Revista «Telhados de Vidro» nº 12, Averno (Lisboa), Maio/ 2009]

when we promise to give the silence

to the hours, I get in the song

of the night to listening to the first

noise that reports us, as

a cobra that hides

on a beach chair.

[21 HAIKU COM ASAS, URBANO E CABRAS, 2008]

[Renata Correia Botelho was born in 1977 in S. Miguel, Azores. In 2001, she published Avulsos, Por Causa (author's edition out of market); in 2008 21 HAIKU COM ASAS, URBANO E CABRAS, with Emanuel Jorge Botelho and Urbano, Galeria 111 (Lisbon) and in 2009 Um Circo not Nevoeiro (Averno). She has collaborated with the magazines Magma and Telhados de Vidro.

[Translated by María Dolores Fernández]