The Age of the Girls

The Age of the Girls João Luís Barreto Guimarães (bio) Translation from the Portuguese Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution The girls who were talking in the corner not long agoare just now starting to get up(grabbing jackets from the coatrack)taking up their umbrellas again and a forgotten walletthat the tallest comes to rescuefrom the mess of cigarette butts touched withcake cream andlipstick. The middle of the day conveys theage of the girlscertainthey have succeeded in quietly shatteringa chapter of their lives.They dissolve toward the doorvestiges of voices that are no longer theirsno longer catching my eye(now drawn to the corner table that they left alignedwith the rest of the mess). Ohhow I envy the boy whose job it is to bus the table.He barely notices how they let that momentslip into the etherhe moves quickly to sweep the crumbs of that happiness(not what's strewn across the tabletop butin that concentrated air:)secret combinationsfleetingfragments of echoes(some syllable detached froma ragged paragraph)that you tilt your ear toward with a craving for timeas if it were the tip. [End Page 19] João Luís Barreto Guimarães João Luís Barreto Guimarães is a reconstructive surgeon from Porto, Portugal, and the author of eleven poetry books. His work has been awarded the António Ramos Rosa National Poetry Award and the Armando da Silva Carvalho Poetry Award, and he has twice been a finalist for the International Camaiore Prize. Calvin Olsen Calvin Olsen (calvin-olsen.com) is a poet and translator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His translation of João Luís Barreto Guimarães's Mediterranean won the Willow Run Poetry Book Award and is forthcoming from Hidden River Arts. Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

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