Grammatical Exercise
Written by Nuno Judice
Translated from the Portuguese by Ana Hudson
Narrated by Bill Wolak
You, the one
the winds travel
with the lips
of horizons,
and is covered by a strange cloud
with the bitter sheet
of dawn: give me
your hands, now
that your name lingers
in all the ears of the earth;
or run through that subterraneous
river which flows into
the depths
of mirrors, from where
no voice is calling you.
You, the most
abstract of pronouns,
dressed in the deaf
fire of the last vowel, as
if a shadow of silences
were dancing among
murmurs and memories: don’t
leave at sunrise,
a vague wishing dream,
or the ephemeral light
with
which I looked at you.
Stay in the ink of my fingers,
in the remains of a line, faceless
secret; or take me with you,
clean from reflexes and pronouns,
while the rustle of a water fountain
teaches me how to find you.
Nuno Júdice is a poet and fiction writer, born in 1949, who published his first poetry book in 1972. He graduated in Romance Philology from the University of Lisbon and obtained the degree of Doctor from the New University of Lisbon (Universidade Nova), where he was professor until 2015. He received Spain’s Queen Sofia Ibero-American Poetry Prize in 2013, awarded by the Spanish National Heritage and the University of Salamanca. In 1996, he released the poetry magazine Tabacaria, edited by “Casa Fernando Pessoa” until 1998. In 1997, he was appointed Cultural Counselor of the Embassy of Portugal and Director of the Camões Institute in Paris. In 2009, he assumed the direction of Colóquio/Letras, the literary magazine of the Gulbenkian Foundation.
Ana Hudsonhas a BA in Modern Languages and Literatures from the Universidade Nova in Lisbon and a MA in Portuguese Studies/History Path from King’s College London. She is responsible for “Poems from the Portuguese” (www.poemsfromtheportuguese.org), the most comprehensive anthology of 21st century Portuguese poetry online (and offline), which she has set up and devised. She lives in England.