Chapter 3 - Sao Paulo is beautiful in its ugliness
Iara:
São Paulo / A strange city / Beautiful in its ugliness /
Clumsy in its elegance / Special character / Inside the pollution / Photos /
Movies / Exhibitions / the whole world is in it
Ze'ev:
Sao Paulo
My love
Beautiful in its ugliness
Graceful in its crudeness
Pure soul
Yet immersed
In its pollution
Ze'ev
I wonder how this poem would come out in Portuguese.
Iara:
It is very difficult to translate from Hebrew to Portuguese.
These are so different languages, in building sentences, how they say anything
at all. I do not know how to explain, maybe someone who studied languages…
Ze'ev:
There's no need to translate. It has to be rewritten
in Portuguese. The relation to the source is not interesting at all.
Iara:
The sun set down today/ orange behind the buildings. / In so
much smoke / It looked like a ball / Playing hide and seek
The pollution paints the sky in unexpected colors. People do
not breathe, but at least they have beautiful skies.
Ze'ev:
Smoke pollutes the sky
With strange, new, orange colors
Not breathing
But playing with the sun
Hide and seek between the buildings
Iara:
I imagined a sun with rain, but not the rainbow, only drops
of water shining, like diamonds.
Like diamonds / drops of water falling from the sky / wetting
trees and woman / little girl clothes / streets and cars / and all my thoughts
Ze'ev:
The diamond is not connected to the rest of the sentence.
Wetting thoughts is something you need to explain.
Iara:
Like diamonds / water drops / decorating trees and woman /
little girl clothes / streets / cars / illuminating thoughts
Ze'ev:
Drops of water dripping from the sky
Shining for me
The asphalt of my thoughts
Cling to me, like diamonds
On the boulevard leaves
Trickling down
With a glittering gleam
Over cheeks of cars
Iara:
What a sophisticated poem ...
Dripping sounds so pleasant. Over the cheeks of the cars... beautiful!!!
I liked.
Iara:
Flood / lightning and thunder / It seems that the sky is
falling / Inside me lightning and thunder / a flood of tears from my eyes / The
city is drowning / Me too
Ze'ev:
In my temples
Lightning
In my eyes, tears
The city seems to be drowning
Me too
Iara:
Why temples?
Ze'ev:
"My temples" are the sides of the skull, - where
you sometimes feel a headache. In English, it has another beautiful meaning
since Temple is also the house of God.
Iara:
The birds announce /in their silence / the end of spring /
rain, full of thunder / sound the sound of summer
Here the rains fall in the summer, not in the winter ... The
warmer the air, the stronger the rain, and there are also more lightning and
thunder. And this is the first time in my life that I have noticed the singing
of the birds. In the spring, they drove me crazy at midnight (I was awake
because of you) and now they are silent. It's new to me, in this big city. What
I am trying to tell is that there are sounds of alarms, cars, buses, beeps,
nobody is paying attention to nature. The day is never over. There are always
shops and restaurants open, people on the street ... It's a rhythm that is not
so connected to daylight.
Ze'ev:
Brazil is not Israel -
Here
When birds are silent
Summer begins to make rain
The hotter the air
Then more is the rain
Thunder and lightning
The poems
Make me jump
To unimportant matters
Iara:
More correctly, Sao Paulo. Because it's a city like New York.
It's not about Brazil. In Sao Paulo, the birds are crazy in the spring. Silent
at its end. Afraid of the thunder that brings summer.
Iara:
When there are connections / when people love / care / they
quarrel
Ze'ev:
Relationship - Battleship
In my opinion, this is very strong - sounds like an idiom -
two three words that summarize a psychological phenomenon.
Iara:
It's hard to translate it because you have to maintain the
ryme.
Ze'ev:
Lovers are like a pair of pigeons, and anyone who is interested
in pigeons knows that they quarrel all the time.
Iara:
The translation will wait ... It's really hard. I've never
seen a pair of pigeons. I saw them only in masses, having a food fight. I have
good friends, their last name is Lobo, meaning wolf. When their daughter was
small, she returned from a weekend with friends, and told her mother: "I
think her parents do not like each other. They did not fight even once"!
Iara:
Dark clouds / came suddenly / stole the blue of my sky / and
the day that was bright and happy / darkened / and became sad
Ze'ev:
Gray clouds
Stole the blue of my sky
The day
That was bright and happy
Became Dark
And cold
Iara:
I have a beautiful view from the window. Today I looked at
the city, at all the buildings, and suddenly everything seemed dead, for
nothing changes, and I dreamed about the beach, with its horizon, and its
endless water and sky.
Buildings standing / cars streaming / fragments of sky / no
horizon / this is not the sea / with its infinity of water
Ze'ev:
Apartment towers
Pierce the gray sky of Sao Paulo
Hiding the sea
Cars without people
Race along black, tarred roads
The city is dead
Me, Ze'ev, I’m alive
Iara:
I wanted you to be inside my eyes / How to describe to you my
city / the landscape of my window / The dozens of birds who decided to dance in
circles precisely in front of me / Maybe they are happy because the clouds
painted endless white shapes in the sky / I try to tell about the trees / They
look small down there/ Like a green blanket / that covers the houses / and then
one forgets that millions of people live here / the pollution and the noise /
the huge traffic jams / In the weekend the city is resting / the nature has
sounds / the city is beautiful and it is unusual / and you do not understand /
not always one sees birds / The sky disappears among the tall buildings / there
is noise and people are running and working all day long/ One feels only the
concrete / Hears only the cars / Machines and horns alarms / If you were near
me or in my eyes / you would have told all this, surely
Ze'ev:
Right in front of me
Dozens of birds decided to dance the
Hora
Joyful that clouds
paint endless white shapes in the sky
From the eighth floor
Trees are like a green blanket
That covers the houses
The concrete and noise
Of Sao Paulo sounds distant
Just as our prayers to God
Iara:
Here, you have seen and heard!!! You are closer to me than
God ...
Iara:
On the tops of concrete jungle trees / singing / iPads with
wings
Ze'ev:
Trees from concrete?
Singing or honking?
IPads with wings - what are they singing?
Iara:
I thought that in the concrete jungle the buildings looked
like trees, and the birds looked like iPads with wings. So, they chirp to the
sirens.
Ze'ev:
In concrete jungle
On treetops
Ringtones of winged cell phones
Compete with sirens
Iara:
I do not have curtains in the house / sometimes a curtain of
rain comes / closes my window / and the city in front of me disappears / and I
stay alone
I have an amazing view, from a high place, and it really
happens that everything disappears, and even the height cannot be seen. And you
see the rain coming, like a curtain, like a sheet, like a wall of water,
blocking your vision. I'm left alone and the world around me is gone. From the
high floor, everything is small down there, I am above all. When such a rain
comes, it seems to me that the building could fall, that I am small and weak.
It's not like closing my eyes, because I open them, and the rain is still
there, hiding everything from me.
Ze'ev:
If you talk to the rain and tell it not to hide the city from
you - it starts to be something special.
Iara:
It always surprises me. You can see the wind pushing all the
rain toward me. And not only the view disappears, you also hear nothing but the
rain. There are no alarms, the noise of the cars is gone. It's a little scary,
because it just hides everything when it's strong. And at the same time, it's
like magic. We do not know how long it will take until it passes. So, I like to
wait and see when it walks away, goes somewhere else, and everything starts to
reappear, bathed, wet, and again you hear the noise of cars driving on a wet
road. Everything slowly returns to its place.
Ze'ev:
The tears come in surprise
Like water in a winter stream
On their way to the floor
They block
The low view of the city
Until they fade and disappear
Moving to another sad soul
And the city reappears
Bathed wet, like after the rain
Iara:
Pairs of red or white eyes / approaching and moving away /
standing and running / frightening / cars in the streets / in a drunk night /
in Sao Paulo
The cars in the streets looked to me like animals that attack
me. I panicked. The headlamps were like eyes, at night, because I was drunk. I
did not know whether I was drunk or the city. All this after one caipirinha
from a cachaça (Nega Maluca –"crazy baby" - the name of the cachaça)
with lemon and black sugar. Am I crazy?
Ze'ev:
After one caipirinha from a cachaça
Lemon and black sugar
Sao Paulo is getting drunk
And cars attack me
Like night predators
With red or white eye lights
What is black sugar? What we in Israel call brown sugar?
Iara:
Yes, that's what you call brown sugar! You need to fix it to
brown sugar. I did not know its name in Hebrew.
Eye lights - is this your invention or is there such an
expression? It's beautiful.
Ze'ev:
Mine, as far as I know.
Iara:
The moon is smiling / perhaps because of the spring that came
with the flowering of the Ipê / ahead of time
Ze'ev:
At the same time that in Israel
Squill flowers herald the arrival of autumn
In Brazil
It's already spring
And with it
The yellow blossoms of the
Ipê
What is the connection between the moon and the flowering of
the Ipê?
Iara:
Ipê is a very beautiful Brazilian tree. The flowering is
without leaves, only shiny yellow flowers, glowing in the sun. For us it is
still winter by date, until September, but it is already hot and the spring has
progressed. There's a bird, I do not know its name, who sang me a new melody at
midnight. And in the last few nights the moon looked like a smile in the sky,
like the smile of the cat in Alice in Wonderland. I thought the moon was glad
for the tree bloom. The seasons are not so clear here. The trees are always
green, only the flowers change.
Iara:
The cool wind and your warm body / caressing my body on the
porch / birds singing loud / calling the light of the day to come / They had
just turned off the streetlights
And buses began to go / At the dawn of Rosh Hashana / Sao
Paulo / Spring
I also wanted to note that Rosh Hashanah is in the spring.
Ze'ev:
Cool wind and your warm hand
Are caressing my body
On the eighth floor, on the balcony
Birds beg the light of the day to
come
They have just turned off the
streetlights
And buses begin to operate
At the dawn of Rosh Hashanah
In the Diaspora
In spring
In Sao Paulo
Iara:
I have the feeling that maybe I can start writing in
Portuguese.
Ze'ev:
That's exactly what I wish you for the New Year.
Iara:
On the way to work / blue skies / without clouds / white and
pink purple and yellow/ flowers / in the building gardens / spring arrives here
/ on Rosh Hashana
After six months in Africa
I'm still getting confused about
times
Do not understand how the sky is blue
Where did the clouds disappear?
What happened to the flowers
That bloom in white, pink, purple and
yellow
In peoples’ gardens?
Iara:
I went in the morning / white sky / so bright / maybe it's
Photoshop? / Suddenly a naked tree / not even one leaf on it / Ah / it's autumn
Ze'ev:
In Autumn
God paints
In his Photoshop
Too white skies
Too naked trees
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