Susan Margaret Brown
ten
By António Osório, translated from the Portuguese by Patricio Ferrari and Susan M. BrownAntónio Osório, originally from Setúbal, a port town south of Lisbon, was born in 1933 to a Portuguese father and an Italian mother. He practiced law by profession, serving both as the head of the Portuguese Bar Association and as president of the Portuguese Association for Environmental Law. His early books — A Raiz Afectuosa [The Tender Root] and A Ignorância da Morte [Ignorance of Death] — were both published in the 1970s to great acclaim in Portugal. Later books would earn him the Township of Lisbon Literary Prize (1982), the P.E.N. Club Portuguese Poetry Prize (1991), and the prestigious Portuguese National Authors Prize (2010) for his collected works A Luz Fraterna [Fraternal Light]. A Felicidade da Luz [Joy of Light], published by Assírio & Alvim in 2016, was his last book. António Osório passed away at his family home, in Lisbon, on November 18th, 2021, at the age of 88. The selection of ten poems translated were originally published in Portuguese in Planetário e Zoo dos Homens (Lisbon, ed. Presença, 1990) (Panetary and Zoo of Men).
