Eduardo Bettencourt Pinto was born in Gabela, Angola. He is from an Azorean family and lived for a brief time in Rhodesia and for seven years in the island of S. Miguel. He has collaborated immense with the newspapers and literary supplements in the Azores, United States and Canada. He has published poetry and fiction. He is represented in anthologies and he also published an anthology of Azorean contemporary writers that inspired this translator to take on this task. He is the editor of the online Portuguese language literary magazine Seixo. He makes his home in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada.
A Friend
There is a house within the look
of a friend.
In it we enter shaking the rain.
We leave the coat on the hanger
still fumigating from the fires of the day.
In the fountains and in the gardens
of the words that we bring
the friend raises the chalice
and the summer
of the seeds.
Then the windows of the hands are opened so we can sing
the clarity, the water
and the bridges of his voice
where the most arduous splendors dance.
The friend is us, crossing the look
and the veils of hemp upon the face of life
in the afternoons of lightning and of exiles,
where the nomad wrath of the city burns
like a blind person looking for light.
Um Amigo
Há uma casa no olhar
de um amigo.
Nela entramos sacudindo a chuva.
Deixamos no cabide o casaco
fumegando ainda dos incêndios do dia.
Nas fontes e nos jardins
das palavras que trazemos
o amigo ergue o cálice
e o verão
das sementes.
Então abre as janelas das mãos para que cantem
a claridade, a água
e as pontes da sua voz
onde dançam os mais árduos esplendores.
Um amigo somos nós, atravessando o olhar
e o véus de linho sobre o rosto da vida
nas tardes de relâmpagos e nos exílios,
onde a ira nómada da cidade arde
como um cego em busca de