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Variety
Poetry

For My Father

By
Alexis Levitin
Alexis Levitin
&
Leonor Scliar-Cabral
Issue 23
December 15, 2024
Header image design by Orly Zebak.
Variety
Poetry
Issue 23
For My Father

“For My Father” is written by Leonor Scliar-Cabral and has been translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin.

‍

Smoke in my eyes, a mist, a haze,

curtains of misfortune, harbingers,

disturbing the reflection in the water,

mirroring the palm trees as they sway.

‍

From Oswaldo Aranha, lovers on the run,

By obscure paths we reached the pond:

shoals of fish were gobbling down the crumbs

tossed in by absent-minded soldier boys,

‍

Indifferent to a soon-to-be Ophelia

bobbing among poplars and camellias

In search of pardon in the flowing waters.

‍

Where is the candle I must light, is it here?

Or maybe the menorah of one who waits

Will slowly come to flame in the third sphere.

No items found.

Alexis Levitin

During the last half century, Alexis Levitin has published forty-eight books as a translator, primarily of poetry from Brazil, Portugal, and Ecuador. His works include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both published by New Directions. Three volumes of his translations of contemporary Portuguese poetry were published by Guernica Editions of Montreal and Toronto. Later this year, his translation of Leonor Scliar-Cabral’s Consecration of the Alphabet, a sonnet sequence devoted to the history of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, will be published by Ben Yehuda Press. His own short stories began in the fear-tinged isolation of the pandemic. Those stories gave him a new life. So far fifty-one of them have been published in various magazines in the United States and in Europe. A collection of his chess-related stories, The Last Ruy Lopez: Tales from the Royal Game, has just come out from Russell Enterprises.

  • Alexis Levitin

    During the last half century, Alexis Levitin has published forty-eight books as a translator, primarily of poetry from Brazil, Portugal, and Ecuador. His works include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both published by New Directions. Three volumes of his translations of contemporary Portuguese poetry were published by Guernica Editions of Montreal and Toronto. Later this year, his translation of Leonor Scliar-Cabral’s Consecration of the Alphabet, a sonnet sequence devoted to the history of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, will be published by Ben Yehuda Press. His own short stories began in the fear-tinged isolation of the pandemic. Those stories gave him a new life. So far fifty-one of them have been published in various magazines in the United States and in Europe. A collection of his chess-related stories, The Last Ruy Lopez: Tales from the Royal Game, has just come out from Russell Enterprises.

  • Leonor Scliar-Cabral

    Leonor Scliar-Cabral is a poet and psycholinguist in the field of literacy training. Her collections of poetry are: Sonnets, Memories of the Sephardim, Erotica of Old Age, The Sun Fell on the Guaíba, Consecration of the Alphabet, and José. Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Blue Unicorn, Epoch, and elsewhere.

“For My Father” is written by Leonor Scliar-Cabral and has been translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin.

‍

Smoke in my eyes, a mist, a haze,

curtains of misfortune, harbingers,

disturbing the reflection in the water,

mirroring the palm trees as they sway.

‍

From Oswaldo Aranha, lovers on the run,

By obscure paths we reached the pond:

shoals of fish were gobbling down the crumbs

tossed in by absent-minded soldier boys,

‍

Indifferent to a soon-to-be Ophelia

bobbing among poplars and camellias

In search of pardon in the flowing waters.

‍

Where is the candle I must light, is it here?

Or maybe the menorah of one who waits

Will slowly come to flame in the third sphere.

No items found.

Alexis Levitin

During the last half century, Alexis Levitin has published forty-eight books as a translator, primarily of poetry from Brazil, Portugal, and Ecuador. His works include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both published by New Directions. Three volumes of his translations of contemporary Portuguese poetry were published by Guernica Editions of Montreal and Toronto. Later this year, his translation of Leonor Scliar-Cabral’s Consecration of the Alphabet, a sonnet sequence devoted to the history of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, will be published by Ben Yehuda Press. His own short stories began in the fear-tinged isolation of the pandemic. Those stories gave him a new life. So far fifty-one of them have been published in various magazines in the United States and in Europe. A collection of his chess-related stories, The Last Ruy Lopez: Tales from the Royal Game, has just come out from Russell Enterprises.

  • Alexis Levitin

    During the last half century, Alexis Levitin has published forty-eight books as a translator, primarily of poetry from Brazil, Portugal, and Ecuador. His works include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words, both published by New Directions. Three volumes of his translations of contemporary Portuguese poetry were published by Guernica Editions of Montreal and Toronto. Later this year, his translation of Leonor Scliar-Cabral’s Consecration of the Alphabet, a sonnet sequence devoted to the history of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, will be published by Ben Yehuda Press. His own short stories began in the fear-tinged isolation of the pandemic. Those stories gave him a new life. So far fifty-one of them have been published in various magazines in the United States and in Europe. A collection of his chess-related stories, The Last Ruy Lopez: Tales from the Royal Game, has just come out from Russell Enterprises.

  • Leonor Scliar-Cabral

    Leonor Scliar-Cabral is a poet and psycholinguist in the field of literacy training. Her collections of poetry are: Sonnets, Memories of the Sephardim, Erotica of Old Age, The Sun Fell on the Guaíba, Consecration of the Alphabet, and José. Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Blue Unicorn, Epoch, and elsewhere.