Wallace Stevens: "The house was quiet and the world was calm" / "A casa estava quieta e o mundo calmo": trad. de Paulo Henriques Britto

A casa estava quieta e o mundo calmo


A casa estava quieta e o mundo calmo.
Leitor tornou-se livro, e a noite de verão

Era como o ser consciente do livro.
A casa estava quieta e o mundo calmo.

Palavras eram ditas como se livro não houvesse,
Só que o leitor debruçado sobre a página

Queria debruçar-se, queria mais que muito ser
O sábio para quem o livro é verdadeiro

E a noite de verão é como perfeição da mente.
A casa estava quieta porque tinha de estar.

Estar quieta era parte do sentido e da mente:
Acesso da perfeição à página.

E o mundo estava calmo. Em mundo calmo,
Em que não há outro sentido, a verdade

É calma, é verão e é noite, a verdade
É o leitor insone debruçado a ler.

The house was quiet and the world was calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

STEVENS, Wallace. "The house was quiet and the world was calm" / "A casa estava quieta e o mundo calmo". In:_____. O imperador do sorvete e outros poemas. Trad. de Paulo Henriques Britto. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017.