Translator’s Note: “Goats” by Eugénio de Andrade

I love the natural-order appetitive forthrightness of “As Cabras” (“Goats”) and have reached for that here; I’ve also tried to make my English version as aurally interstitched and orally satisfying as the Portuguese original.

One textual note: zinha is the kind of wonderfully economical polychord diminutive we ought to have in English. So softly does it naturalize-domesticate in this poem by its tone-colors of fondness, familiarity, playfulness, endearment, I’ve left it there untranslated to do its work.

Eugénio de Andrade is one of Portugal’s most beloved writers, the kind of poet a Lisbon taxi-man will want to recite to you, mellifluously, once he’s run through his Pessoa, after he’s finished up his Camões—

Creio que foi o sorriso
o sorriso foi quem abriu a porta.
Era um sorriso com muita luz
lá dentro, apetecia
entrar nele, tirar a roupa, ficar
nu dentro daquele sorriso.
Correr, navegar, morrer naquele sorriso.
                 —O Sorriso

—ar