Poems

Cataclysm and Songs

Notes

This small poem was by far the most complex of the three short poems by Conceição Lima we translated as a result of the compact nature and ambiguity of the original.

The opening lines were difficult to unpack, but we were pleased with the resulting 'S' sounds which matched the 'C' sounds in the original: this was why we fixed on 'slaughter', for example.

We changed the syntax of the final stanza to make it clearer in English.

Sarah Maguire, Workshop Facilitator