Biography.
Matheus Guménin Barreto (1992) is a poet and translator. He is currently a Ph.D. student in German Language and Literature at University of São Paulo (USP), University of Leipzig and University of Salzburg. He published the following collections of poems: A máquina de carregar nadas (2017), Poemas em torno do chão & Primeiros poemas (2018) and Mesmo que seja noite (2020). A new book will be published in 2022. His poems were translated into English, Spanish, German and Catalan. He joined Printemps Littéraire Brésilien 2018 in France and Belgium at the invitation of Sorbonne University. His translation works include poems and prose excerpts from Bertolt Brecht, Elfriede Jelinek, Ingeborg Bachmann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan, Peter Waterhouse, Rainer Maria Rilke and others.
The poem “[is it lawful a poem]” (translated by Rubens Chinali) was first published in Contemporary Brazilian Poetry (2020).
Poems to be whispered
And at that night she was alone
like the linen they forgot to weave.
Extreme poem
Take in the hand the stone
take in the hand the chair
take in the hand the bread
table ladder glass of water
take it
pull it aside
and uncover the poetry
there.
Translated by Caio Cesar Esteves de Souza
First
The very touching the things
to remind the hands of the
clean architecture of that
which the world has conceived.
The clean, cartesian, straight hand
through the things
to take the dust off the names
sun, cup, peel, tile, peach, misery
and touch once again
as in the First Day
something in the names
that vibrates.
The null poet/m
when hutus slaughtered tutsis
when hutus slaughtered tutsis
when hutus slaughtered tutsis
when tutsis slaughtered tutsis
.
and when the poet writes
[when tutsis slaughtered tutsis
peccancy
peccancy
for the peccancy for the pecc-
ancy
peccan/cy
peccancy of not knowing what are tutsis
tutsis what are they
what are tutsis
who are
hutus
what
slaughtered
tutsis
and look for where is Rwanda
Rwanda ¿
and weeps for not knowing where it is
where is it
slaughtered tutsis
Rwanda
- most of them struck by machetes.
Translated by Caio Cesar Esteves de Souza
[is it lawful a poem]
is it lawful a poem where echo the footsteps
of a single man or of his shadow the footsteps?
is it lawful a poem of some bare, clean feet on an
even cleaner courtyard? lawful
that water not yet convex from touches or
mirrored faces other than a single face, that this water
remains?
echoes, footsteps, shadows, bare feet, touches?
is it lawful that there is? is it lawful that there is such a rare word:
lawful?
is it lawful that there is what is there in verses
like these
if shootings pierce the skin of a mother of a father of a child and of one who wasn't
born and won't be born in some dark corner of this country that I don't even deign
to know while I write a poem about writing a poem about a .38 caliber revolver that
decides to cancel time?
Translated by Rubens Chinali
Canis lupus familiaris
you fucking pain in the ass
barking at dead of night in pursuit of a face
you will not find your face
neither today nor tomorrow
dear
sister
Translated by Matheus Guménin Barreto
