Ikiru

I saw grief, misunderstanding
and more than one old revolt
dividing us in the dark.
The hand I wouldn't kiss,
the crumb that they denied me,
refusal to ask pardon.
Pride. Terror at night.
But he didn't say anything ..

The narrow space of life
crowds me up against you,
and in this ghostly embrace
it's as if I were being burned
completely, with poignant love.
Only now do we know each other.

Eye-glasses, memories, portraits
flow in the river of blood.
Now the waters won't let me
make out your distant face,
distant by seventy years ...

     

                                                                     

Carlos Drummond de Andrade
1902 - 1987
Travelling in the Family
  fragments
Elizabeth Bishop
  translation
Elizabeth Bishop
  Poems, Prose, 
    and Letters
Robert Giroux and
  Lloyd Schwartz
  editors
The Library of America, 2008©

Takashi Shimura
  on the film set of
  Akira Kurosawa, "Ikiru"
1956

Asger Skovgaard