61
Hugh Fox
Imposivil imaginar a lagoa tranquilo,
piscando no sol da tarde tarde, as
jovenes andando com sus jeans tão
apertados que parecen ser feitos
de borracho,as palmeras falando com
a brisa, os motocyclistas feroces, quasi
voando sobre as ruas, os bebes, as
barrigas cheias de embryos,
uma mulher invalida enorme en su
cadeira de rodas, a velha sentada ao
lado da lagoa sonhando de Maria,
mae de Deos com su ventre milagrosa....
cuando o porque.
61
Hugh Fox
(translated from Portugese)
Impossible to imagine the lagoon calm
walking in the late afternoon sun,
the young women walking around with
jeans so tight that they seem to be made
out of rubber, the palms talking with the
breeze, the motorcyclists ferocious,
almost flying over the streets, babies,
bellies full of embryos, a crippled woman
in her wheelchair, an old lady sitting
next to the lagoon dreaming of Maria,
the mother of God, with her magic womb....
everything gone, and we can’t even imagine
when or why.
[This poem is one of over 60 poems Hugh Fox wrote in Portugese and then translated into English during a visit with his wife’s family in Brazil]
Hugh Fox was born in Chicago, 1932, had polio as a
kid and was the first human being to receive a pre-Salk serum that worked. But
because he had been crippled for more than a year, and his father was an
ex-violinist turned M.D. and his mother a frustrated non-acting actress, he was
soaked in culture during his entire childhood: violin, piano, musical
composition, art, travel. Hugh has a BS in Humanities and MA in English from Loyola University in Chicago, and a PhD in American Literature from the University of Illinois. He became a Professor in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University in 1968 and remained there until he retired in 1999. He was
Editor of Ghost Dance: The International
Quarterly of Experimental Poetry from 1968-1995. The most recent
of his 105 books are Collected Poetry (World Audience, 2008), Ghosts (Green
Panda Press, 2008) and Alex (Rubicon Press,2008).