Woman by the sea and corsairs

“MAYDAY I launch, because the war lasts
and the vessel in which I set out is empty
and gives way at the bottom where the wave pierces,
the crack sucks out, a lack – not
a cork jar that would sail;
specific: it is terracotta and fracture,
and I am scattered, and the massive liquidity.
Late, I know, it will be, if help comes:
if this sign shines through little in the dark,
and the water foresees no writing
if I lie here: erasure only, gentle
the seam, will make the wave in a slow
stitch a shroud over the drowning.”

Margarida Vale de Gato was born in Vendas Novas in 1973. She translates, writes, is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and a researcher at the Centre for English Studies of the same institution. She translated Henri Michaux, Nathalie Sarraute, Yeats, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Marianne Moore, Jack Kerouac, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, among other authors, into Portuguese.

 Her literary work includes the poetry books Lançamento (2016), the play Desligar e Voltar a Ligar (with Rui Costa, 2011) and Mulher ao Mar. The latter is a poetic project with periodic updates.