“There was” and other poems

by Eunice Arruda

June, 2025

Editor’s Note: We feature these poems in English translation and in the original Portuguese. Scroll down to read in English, and click “Español” to read in Portuguese.

From À Beira (1999):

On The Edge

We sat
on the edge
Washerwomen
feet
in fresh waters
Dark
stones
around us
voices
poems
and the sudden
Silence of the cicadas.

Salvation
is
the place
where we sat
reading hearing

Poems
yet again
the call
of freshwaters

To freshwaters
I’ll soon return.

This
sudden
joy

Wine

Burning my face
Setting debts
Limits alight

Today
the world carries me
the hanging sword
doesn’t cut through the
air
And fate
surrounds me
but doesn’t reach me

From Os Momentos (1981):

Image- II

strong light
the human gaze
raises rends the fibre
the hunger for another gaze
a fine strong
blade
light of the human
gaze

From Debaixo do sol (2010):

There was (I)

Strange tender gestures
Exploring knowing the body’s
Limits trying to taste the honey
The flavour of love on the skin of the moment:
Beyond
Was the sea taken in by shadows
Hands wet with dew, sap from the
Tree
That hid and revealed to us
The twofold gleam
Of knife and sunlight

Translated by Nuala Motel-Casey

Photo: David Ramos, Unsplash.

Eunice Arruda

Eunice Arruda was born in 1939 in Santa Rita do Passa Quatro in the hinterland of São Paulo state in Brazil. She passed away in 2017, and her collected poems were published posthumously by Patuá in 2018. A well-loved figure in the contemporary poetry landscape in Brazil and a lifelong educator, Arruda published an astounding fourteen collections during her lifetime. Since her death, her work has gained increased attention and recognition, and was celebrated at the prestigious international literary festival of Paraty (FLIP) in 2024. Her poems have appeared in French, Italian, German, and Spanish translations.

Nuala Motel-Casey

Nuala Motel-Casey is a translator and writer based in Norwich, United Kingdom. Her poetry has previously appeared in Visual Verse and Lighthouse. The experience of being embodied and alive runs through her writing and translation practice alongside considerations of place, absence, and belonging. Having grown up between France and Ireland and lived in Italy and Brazil, she is particularly interested in poetry translation from Italian, French, and Brazilian Portuguese. This led her to earn her MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia in 2019. She fell in love with Arruda’s poetry shortly before her death and aims to bring her words to an English-speaking audience.

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