/lit/ - Literature

I wrote this comic quatrain in a writing-meeting with friends. The subject of the poems was the guillotine. I will post the translation of the poem I wrote first, and then the Portuguese original.

The original is a quatrain of four equal rhymes – AAAA – and 12 poetic syllables per line.

Here the translation:

Who at one finger snap teaches the road to the afterlife?
Who makes of homicide an elegant ballerina?
Who tames in a gentle swan the beast of carnage?
It is the queen of France, the illustrious guillotine.

And here the original:

Quem num só estalo a estrada para o além ensina?
Faz do homicídio uma elegante bailarina?
Quem doma em cisne a besta da carnificina?
É a rainha da França, a ilustre guilhotina.