Two Rivers

Today’s (optional) prompt is again drawn from our archives, and builds off our daily resource. Take a look around Poetry International for a poem in a language you don’t know…Now, read the poem to yourself, thinking about the sound and shape of the words, and the degree to which they remind you of words in your own language. Use those correspondences as the basis for a new poem.

For this prompt I chose a random poem in Portuguese called “Two Rivers” (“Dois rios”) by Luis Miguel Nava.

O corpo dividido em duas partes
fechadas
à chave uma na outra, avanço
num duplo coração como se fosse
ao mesmo tempo num só barco por dois rios.

I don’t speak Portuguese, and tried ’translating’ this without looking up the English version first.

Oh! Bodice divided in two
fetching
comments of outrage and avarice
duplicating quare old fools
temporarily mesmorized by two rivers