OCEANS AND FORGOTTEN SEAS

Tormented oceans, long now laid to rest,

Where violent, angry tides begin to break,

Arousing fears and mournful cries that make

The boldest valiant corsairs feel distressed.

Turbid, wild, immeasurable seas pressed,

Whose waters from the rocks their strength do take.

From troubled dreams they rise, for misery’s sake,

The oceans of the soul that are possessed.

If we don’t see the waves that start to climb,

At least we hear the sorrow of their groan

When in our conscience they attain their prime.

Seas where the victors and the vanquished fall,

And suffer in the same sad monotone:

The deep, dark oceans of the bitter gall.

PSICHE

A fragment of my being courts the moon,

Another tries to keep its feet on ground.

While that one wanders out onto the street, soon,

This one does never lose the proper bound.

One side will think, conceptualize, and judge,

The other in emotion’s sway is found.

A part is dressed, the other bare of smudge;

One writes a speech, the other’s song is crowned.

The half that speaks does not incline to hear.

The half that listens knows not what to say.

My whole is part of this contentious sphere,

And I don't know what ending will appear:

If we shall sit and drink hemlock this day,

Or if we learn to know ourselves, my dear.

FACING THE MIRROR

Of all defeats, some lessons still remain,

Imperative instructions on how to live.

So many times you fell, with naught to give,

That you have lined the ground with feathered rain.

You have a few excuses for the pain,

That spoken right, will surely make believe

That you are nobler than you would conceive

(And fools will cheer you with a proud refrain...).

You mastered tinsel, rhetoric, and art,

Affective speeches, quotes that play the part,

And built a framework that could well endure.

But if you fool some poor and distant souls,

You find no solace in these winning scrolls,

And facing mirrors, scream: — "You wretched, poor!"

EPITAPH

To you who risked without a real dare,

Who fell not in love lest you should suffer loss,

Who did not trust yourself, but bore the cross,

Who gave no freedom to a laugh or tear.

To you who chose acceptance to declare

(Because you pondered what the heavy cost),

Although you longed to defend what was tossed,

Each word you spoke when caught without a care.

To you who always wore the finest dress,

Who only started knowing the true end,

Who was betrayed far more than you transgress,

Who made of carefulness your only friend.

To you who lived your life in this distress,

Remained to fully profit from the end.

THE RETURN

You come back from the labor, bruised and worn,

Wounded by pain that cumulative grows;

At the door, your committee waits and shows

Surprise at why your latest route was born;

You say no word. Your body, roughly torn,

Seeks peace, fugacious, where the water flows,

Beneath the tub’s intransitive repose

(The very final space from worries sworn).

You long to close your eyes and fall asleep,

A slumber deep, an epic, endless state;

A comforted repose that you may keep;

But knocking sounds are heard, to call you near;

And quickly, voices, cries, a long shout’s freight...

You wake and see you still are living here.

YOUNG SAILOR FROM LISBON

Iron, fire, a wound that will not mend.

This bitter, salty taste within the throat.

A wave that crashes and logo to float.

Wind, voices, and the sun his face did send.

Nostalgia comes... No comfort can attend.

— "We're going to die!" a sailor starts to note.

He runs; goes to the deck. Grabs, then remote,

Reads the plain letter that his love has penned.

So much to think, remember, and to do...

When waters through the cabin start to creep,

They come unhurried, almost without due.

Dream on, young sailor from old Lisbon town,

Upon the cold and crystal surface deep,

May Camões’ and Pessoa’s verses crown.

SONNET OF HOPE

To Earth with borders, oceans that are named,

Lines, scales, and arrows, numbers that denote;

To Earth divided, so much is proclaimed

Of liberty and faith and States we quote;

To Earth of legions that are poor and blamed

By poverty, and lack of vote or note;

To Earth of mean and bitter hearts untamed,

Who want to curb all life to what they wrote;

Opposing this, another sight we see,

A droplet blue that spins through vast expanse,

Revealing a great miracle that here came true.

A miracle accepted, even by the atheist, who

Is joined by it to all in one long trance.

A miracle recorded in the script we know.

MILLIONS OF HEARTS

Millions of hearts approach us, asking how

Our lives are going and what feeds our dreams,

If we are finding ways to get through now,

And if we follow freedom’s sudden gleams.

They look at us with certainties that bow

To bright imaginings, with colored themes,

Such great new hopes their fervent souls endow

That they believe their very souls redeems.

And we say nothing, nor can we respond.

We fake that there is nothing left to state.

The world’s the one we know, and here we’re fond

Of the conviction that the dead should rest.

While they imagine what we consecrate,

We live without the will to make a quest.

THE DESIRE (O QUERER)

Able to have her near, but not to crave her;

Wanting to have him near, but without might;

Desire is, yes (no), an offering to save her;

It’s knowing the defeat and calling it right;

It’s talking all alone, and hearing a star;

It’s getting caught within a single hair;

It’s to refuse to speak, then say it far;

It’s to divide your life, without despair.

A certainty of having but much doubt.

A game without attack and no defense,

That has no rules, and lacks a challenger to shout.

It may be simply introductory then:

A feeling vague and transient from whence

Or may be, in the end, a great big love’s amen.

HAND IN HAND THROUGH STREETS

Our souls are no more solitary now.

I'm saying this and hope that you'll agree:

My pains eternally belong to thee;

Eternally my own, your sorrows vow.

Walking with hands entwined upon the streets,

I know, I cherish you while you give care to me.

If I discover you, you instantly see

Me in your thoughts; if I go forth, you'll flow.

If I get sad, you quickly come so near;

If problems weigh, you lessen all the fear;

If I speak, you say more between the lines.

Thus I proclaim to you (and you declare):

My pains eternally belong to thee;

Eternally my own, your sorrows share.

CONVERSATION AT THE BAR

I cannot stand for all that you deserve,

Because I have so little now to give.

I own so few things that can truly live;

And very few possessions I preserve.

I have no safety that your hope can serve,

Nor can I guarantee I’ll make you thrive.

A single word I cannot quite survive

The debt we just acquired, and it will curve.

I have no car, nor new, nor even old.

I sometimes wander home quite drunk and cold.

I lose the things I should not then forget.

I only have a heart that’s filled with love,

That beats with pleasure, racing like a dove,

As soon as I am close to where we've met.

DECLARATION OF LOVE

You are unhappy, feel you’re old and plain.

Insecure, you ask me how you look,

If I am happy, or if I forsook

You, and complain about your hair’s white stain.

I say I love you, that I always reign

With love... and think of much from an old book,

From when you were a girl, I was a rook,

And once again my chest bursts out in pain...

If time has yellowed all our photographs,

And changed so many things, so many paths,

It couldn't change this: you are lovely still!

When death, the enemy of those who care,

Comes to demand my life by your bedside there,

I'm certain I'll be loving you until.

HOMAGE TO BENTINHO

Oh! Flower of heaven! Oh! You pure and candid flower!

How innocent you were in early days...

More full of harmony, a brighter haze,

The dawn of happiness shone in your power.

Still flowering, your beauty in that hour

Made those sad days for me begin to raise...

I know; I had some agonizing stays

Of which I keep a spot of shadow sour;

In this dark door that opens onto life,

I sought to put a final end to strife:

— "The life is lost, the battle is then won!"

Rely upon my counsel and my case,

A senior’s voice is always filled with grace,

The life is won, the battle has now run!

THE MIGRANT

When the most final hour begins to show

Your body will descend below the earth,

Sad and unfeeling, as one seeking dearth,

Without a flag or tear that you may owe.

It will be the true farewell of one below,

Who lost the fight, without a trace of worth,

Contradictory and vain, that knows no birth:

The soul against existence as we go.

You won't take with you memories so mean;

The taste, the scent, the touch, a simple view,

Of feelings past and those that have been keen.

Just the immense silence of this very time,

Greater than solitude, somber and true,

Will say: — "Welcome, migrant, from your climb!"

SONNET OF THE CHOSEN

A hero with a body slight, yet brave,

He stands, and bears the world upon his back;

A capable one who turns the war's attack,

From simple ruins to the verse we save;

Often mistreated, like a homeless slave,

From heaven he receives the light, the track,

The simple act of fighting gives the smack

Of wonder to the eyes that don’t deprave.

Essentially a pilgrim spirit now,

Subject of Brazil, and the world entire;

Without a known name or a famous vow.

They’re in the streets, the squares, in trains, in fire;

They’re called the noble ones, or those who bow;

Poor devils, or those chosen by desire.

THE CONDEMNED

I had no luck, he said, avoiding sight.

I never studied. Ran away because

I was abused, and swore I’d end the cause.

I wandered, walked without a place or right.

I grew up fighting all I met that night.

I bent, but did not break beneath the laws.

Life taught me how to keep the hate that draws,

Which I turned into calm and molten light.

I was pursued, and I was the one who chased.

At first a messenger, a young, lost boy,

Then later a respected killer, placed.

When to the starting point I came to see,

I saw that poverty their lives destroy,

And never felt such solitude in me.

BROKEN SONNET

If the present happens, what has gone before

Is fragment kept and cherished in the mind;

Or record that (perhaps) the age can find,

Transformed within the meaning at the core.

It's not what it was when it lived before—

A promissory note we can't unbind—

It's just the separating door behind,

Like so many that talk to the oblivion shore.

If certainties now guarantee our glee

(When we surrender to the will's soft kiss

We lessen all our inner agony),

They give us nothing more than ease and zest.

The lived reality, at end of this,

Becomes a body put to final rest.

CONFESSION

I will not—as I used to do—now go—

With open chest, and with a steadfast stride,

With hands prepared for all to stand as side

By side, with eyes too blind by loving glow.

I do not know what words I should now show;

I do not know the path where I should hide;

My thoughts feel foolish, empty, from the tide;

The will to love has turned to lasting woe!

That gentle laugh of tenderness and grace

Appears to be a thing I can’t embrace;

I feel like other, strange, a new design.

But it was not I (was it I?) who left the place,

It was the fortune that cast me in this disgrace.

And I suffer from a sorrow that is mine.

LOVE TEACHES IN PUNISHMENT

Love makes, and then it breaks up, it is true,

In repetition always, evermore...

If one declares he's master, strong at core,

And able to command it through and through;

If some vain man laughs, with indifferent view,

And places himself in an ivory tower,

Condemning those who feel its sudden power,

And cruelly his Latin will imbue;

If one will raise his voice with arrogance,

When bothered by a friend who is distressed,

Who weeps the dreadful pain of circumstance;

Life does no more than simply play a game,

Because love teaches in the chastened test,

And those who are quite strong, will lose their fame.

IVETE

Dressed in the yellow of a chrysanthemum,

Ivete sighed her loves with gentle sighs

In verses memorized from singers’ cries,

To the quick rhythm of the hammer’s drum.

She dreamed she lived within a golden sum,

A castle where brave guardians would rise

And stand on watch for all the pledges' lies,

And served with longing when the hours come.

Ivete turned the stone to gold she found.

She gathered in the sanatorium’s yard

The jewels that made up her profoundest hoard.

And in the nights of anguish and distress,

She spoke of seaside giants hard and scarred

Who came to trouble her with lust’s duress.

OLD-FASHIONED SONNET

Happy you are not now while at my side;

Happy with you, no longer I remain;

I cannot say that I have been to blame;

I do not judge you guilty, it just died.

We live the present of the past’s rough tide

Of a dead verb that nothing could sustain;

And all that passionate feeling, without gain,

Upon this road of life, was lost and wide.

Looking upon your now-aged, weary face,

I see each sorrow, every wound and scar,

Exposed upon your body in its place.

And, even so, I have no longer might

To hear, if you some confidence impart,

And sleep before you finish in the night.

RELIQUARY

Opened the reliquary, we must see it...

Memories of other times, without end,

Echo throughout the house, a cry to mend,

Distant, provoking ruin, we can’t flee it.

That other self refuses to believe it;

And finds no trace in papers he did send,

Nor in those models that he tried to lend,

Nor in the way he wore his hair to greet it.

There is no way to make a common peace

Among such different parts, conflicting too,

That cannot even find a time to cease.

And, once again imprisoned in the drawer,

The young man of abundant talents new

Laments his future pimping evermore.

SONNET OF LEARNING

To wish to understand the heart’s true core,

Not the dissection of the muscle's stone,

But, yes, the heart that is a thing unknown

Of loves, of passions; the one of emotion’s roar

That does not ask, nor need, an answer for.

To try to solve the cipher on its own,

And seek the reason in the unexplained bone,

What in it seems to be perfection’s door.

To observe, to write—with patience, as I must—

Notations on what troubles the mind's crust,

And makes me, without will, lose all my calm.

But know that the best, the most sincere and true,

The root, the adventurous heart within me new,

Is feeling it pulse within my soul's soft balm.

BRIGHT SUMMER LIGHT

I wanted just a moment of soft grace

To greet this day that is so filled with sun.

A single confidant, near, silent, one,

Who could the whole of this bright whiteness trace

Of this concrete scene, without paint or space.

A white frame, but no white has been begun;

An open frame, no canvas has it won,

Enframed by eyes that make the world embrace.

I wanted to display this very verse

Of white sand and Ipanema's foamy wave,

To someone who could see this sun's bright curse,

Beyond the obvious colors of the heat.

A woman with a white heart, strong and sweet,

Dressed up in light beneath the snow-white pave.

SONNET OF WARNING

Listen to the children who are cast aside,

The voices of the people who're shut out,

There is no other truth, nor other route,

No way to keep them separate to hide.

Our bodies are now covered by a stain;

Our souls are wounded, burdened by this cost;

Our brothers linger, suffering their pain;

And thousands lose their lives before they’re lost.

Even the stones demand that we may heed;

The winds whisper of storms we cannot fight;

The ocean waves send warnings we must read,

And fire spreads across the town and lands.

It is the time to face our needs with hands!

It is the time to break all of the iron bands!

STARTING OVER

With all our dreams now dead, we must love well

The moment and the one we’d not conceived;

Must look without the eyes we had believed

And which gave us the fear of where we fell.

Hear the sounds that we had not heard tell,

Simple things that touch, and are received;

It is to speak the thought we have achieved,

And launch ourselves at sea without a shell.

To step the ground like one who has returned,

After long years in exile, long proscribed,

And take the fight again, with freshness learned.

E quando os sonhos todos retornarem,

Com suas asas negras de granito,

Resta saber viver... e os libertarem!

ENCOUNTER

The Reason Lost its way

When in the fray

Of Emotion.

The Emotion Felt to say

It lived a day

Without Reason.

"— I will feel!"

"— I will think!"

They both then said.

Ah! And here,

By the drink,

They saw the end.

TRANCE

If I speak of the future when I sing,

It is because I know to lie like a child.

Unlike life, I am memory, compiled,

Which in my words its wonder now will bring.

From chaos, music and the dance I wring;

From man, a character almost so mild;

And knowing nothing, I am so beguiled,

That in the endless end, I still will spring.

I praise the work of Homer and the art

Of Tintoretto, passing through the free

Green verses, and I greet the prophet’s heart.

In the precise formation of the verse,

That holds and that expands the universe,

There is no limit to the poet's vain outburst.

GOODBYE

That goodbye hurt, not for the simple wave

Without resentment, without mark of pain;

Not for the space within the house, again,

In the small closet that before was grave.

It hurt because I was so cold and suave,

Trying to give the courtesy I feign.

I came to simulate a joyful strain

In an easy laugh, with venom one must brave.

It hurt because I faked there for no use.

No single disguise truly covers all

The aching of a heart when it lets loose.

I slammed the door and heard your voice so clear;

I thought of how our bodies used to fall.

It hurt because I cannot live alone, my dear.

MESSAGE

We do not like war, no matter what its kind;

We would prefer to sing of liberty.

Do not be shocked to see us in the city,

With our unequal colors intertwined.

No; we are not some marginal group you’d find

That gives no warning to society.

None of that. With so much dignity,

We grow like the small flower that is defined.

No need to close your window’s pane so slight

And peep through the small crack, so careful too,

To know what things we're doing in the light.

If you want us to know, then bring a flame,

And sitting on the floor, we’ll talk with you,

And learn in knowing that we are the same.

DRAGONFLIES

Dragonflies do not fly to heights that soar

Searching for bright ethereal circulations.

They roam, within the gloom of this bar’s door,

As if they were the subjects of paintings' rations:

The legs, the outlines of the waists they bore,

The luminous colors of a Renoir’s stations,

In contrast with the somber space and floor,

And faces strange, without true configurations.

Dragonflies, without wings of diamond spark,

Given to the vulgar passion of the ground—

In the soft voices whispered in the dark—

They fall within the ruins of a war.

They do not reach to places far around,

For when the dawn first gleams, the show is o'er.

SCENE IN SÃO PAULO

The traffic stopped São Paulo. A whole day

Of long lines toward an infinite expanse.

Engines were choked (like a short, muffled trance)

Wanted so much to break from this sad way.

In the great sky, a cloud obscured the ray

Of sun from drivers caught in circumstance;

Horns, swear words I will not repeat, a dance

Composed the scenery of slow decay.

In struggle for a space that brought no calm,

The voices were becoming tense and fraught.

A danger that the cauldron might expand.

But, coming against the flow, two lovers' psalm

Made their protest by giving roses, caught,

To all who'd open up the glass (and hand) heart.