When I die I’ll come back, to fetch the moments I didn’t live by the sea: "Obra Poética" by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
(Obra Poética = Poetic Oeuvre)
Published 2010.
Quando eu morrer voltarei para buscar
Os instantes que não vivi junto do mar
(When I die I’ll come back
To fetch the moments I didn’t live by the sea)
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, one of the greatest poets of Portuguese Literature, 1919 – 2004 (Camoens Award). Her paternal great-grandfather was Danish, and on her mother’s side she belonged to Portuguese aristocracy.
I know Sophia’s poetry like I know myself.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen is one of the best poets I've ever read. I wish everyone would read her one day, be it in Portuguese, German, or English. Portuguese literature from its roots is a literature of the seas (Portugal is located on the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula and plateau, that divides the inland Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean); Sophia is also a poet of the water. The sea is something that’s deeply ingrained within every Portuguese, even in the ones living in the countryside. The sea is always in our minds…
Read on, if you want to be blown away...
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