Luís de Camões – Changent les temps…

Changent les temps et changent les désirs,
Et change l’être et change la confiance ;
Tout l’univers est fait de changement,
Prenant toujours des qualités nouvelles.

Sans cesse nous voyons des nouveautés
Différentes en tout de notre attente ;
Des maux, le souvenir garde la peine,
Et des biens, s’il y en eut, l’amer regret.

Le temps couvre le sol d’un vert manteau
Après l’avoir couvert de neige froide,
Et change en pleurs la douceur de mon chant.

Et non content de changer chaque jour,
Changeant ainsi il nous surprend encore,
Car il ne change plus comme il faisait jadis.

*

Mudam-se os tempos, mudam-se as vontades,
muda-se o ser, muda-se a confiança;
todo o mundo é composto de mudança,
tomando sempre novas qualidades.

Continuamente vemos novidades,
diferentes em tudo da esperança;
do mal ficam as mágoas na lembrança,
e do bem—se algum houve—, as saüdades.

O tempo cobre o chão de verde manto,
que já coberto foi de neve fria,
e enfim converte em choro o doce canto.

E, afora este mudar-se cada dia,
outra mudança faz de mór espanto:
que não se muda já como soía.

*

Time changes, and our desires change. What we
believe—even what we are—is everchanging.
The world is change, which forever
takes on new qualities. And constantly,
we see the new and the novel overturning
the past, unexpectedly, while we retain
from evil, nothing but its terrible pain,
from good (if there’s been any), only the yearning.
Time covers the ground with her cloak of green
where, once, there was freezing snow—and rearranges
my sweetest songs to sad laments. Yet even more
astonishing is yet another unseen
change within all these endless changes:
that for me, nothing ever changes anymore.

***

Luís de Camões (1524-1580) – Sonnets (Chandeigne, 1998) – Traduit du portugais par Anne-Marie Quint & Maryvonne Boudoy – Selected Sonnets (University of Chicago Press, 2005) – Translated by William Baer.