ALISON HATHORNE DEMING: And welcome.
Many of you already know, and a few of you don't yet know,
that the sad news is that, because of health problems,
Adélia Prado has been unable to travel up here from Brazil
for tonight's reading and the other events this week.
Nevertheless, her translator Ellen Watson is here.
And we intend to make this a night
and a week of celebration and homage to Prado's work.
And I hope that we can all manage
to send collective wishes for her good health
and many new poems.
We will be able to bring her voice to you
through a little audio technology.
Ellen's brought a tape that has a few poems read by Adélia
and, I think, a few other comments by her,
so that you'll get a sense of her voice,
the music of the Portuguese, and, hopefully,
a sense of her spirit from hearing her voice.
I'd like to make a couple of announcements
about other events that are happening
in the community in the next couple of weeks.
Many of you would be interested to know that Chax Press has
started a new reading series called Here
and Now, which will be holding readings at the Tucson Museum
of Art.
The first will be Friday, October 23, at 8 o'clock.
And it will be a reading by Tom Mandel and Beth Baruch Joselow.
I hope I pronounced her name right.
I'm not sure that I have.
And on Sunday, November 1, at 7 o'clock,
the Lamplight Reading Series, which
meets downtown at Bentley's, will be sponsoring a reading
by Charles Alexander of Chax Press,
and yours truly, Alison Deming.
Also, finally, in the way of announcements,
we do have The Alphabet in the Park, Ellen Watson's really
marvelous translations of Prado's work,
for sale after the reading.
And if you do not know, there will be a symposium on Friday
and Saturday, organized by Maria José Barbosa,
on the work of Prado and other Luso-African-Brazilian poetry.
That symposium is open to the public.
So if any of you are interested and you don't know about it,
please see me or Isla or Maria José or Ellen after
the reading, and we'll give you more information on that.
A lot of people have helped plan this week.
And even though we don't have Adélia with us,
I'd like to thank people who've put in a particular effort
and vision to put together this celebration of her work.
The Faculty of Humanities, the Department
of Spanish and Portuguese, Tucson Pima Arts Council,
the Latin American Studies Center, and the Women's Studies
program.
One woman in particular, for her love of poetry,
particularly of Prado's, and her hard work and vision in putting
together this celebration of work, is Maria José Barbosa,
of the Department of Portuguese and Spanish.
Even when we learned the unfortunate news that Adélia
couldn't be with us, Maria José found words from another
Brazilian poet to keep us in the mood to celebrate.
And I'll share those words with you.
"We have lost our wings but not our desire to fly."
As you know, Prado is among Brazil's most distinguished
poets.
She's written five books of poetry and poetic prose.
Ellen Watson described her work this afternoon
as work in which there are arms that refuse nothing.
She's both sensual and a poet of the mind,
idiomatic and disconcerting.
Many of you know that her countryman, Carlos Drummond de
Andrade, announced her arrival as a poet of importance
in Brazil in his newspaper column
by saying that there was a poet in Minas Gerais who was taking
dictation from St. Francis.
In our country, where the erotic and the spiritual
are fiercely and politically polarized,
Prado's is a poetry we need.
And we can thank, in particular, Ellen Watson.
The work of the translator, as she says,
is so often invisible.
But tonight we celebrate her, as well,
for bringing this work to us, passionate and quirky poems
that can feed all of our spirits.
Please welcome, Ellen Watson. [APPLAUSE]
ELLEN DORÉ WATSON: This is intimidating, I'm very happy to be here.
I'm very sad not to be here standing next to Adélia.
Some 4 and 1/2 years ago, when my daughter,
who was named after Adélia--
Adélia is her godmother--
was only eight weeks old, Adélia came to this country
for the first time.
And we did a reading tour through New England
and New York City.
And it was truly exciting to stand side by side with her
and celebrate the poetry.
So I'd like to feel like she's with us tonight.
The Alphabet in the Park is made up of selections from
Adélia's first three books of poetry.
And I'm going to begin with three poems
from the first book, which is called
Bagagem, which means baggage.
"Seduction"
"Poetry catches me with her toothed wheel
and forces me to listen, stock-still,
to her extravagant discourse.
Poetry embraces me behind the garden wall.
She picks up her skirt and lets me see, loving and loony.
Bad things happen, I tell her.
I too am a child of God.
Allow me my despair.
Her answer is to draw her hot tongue across my neck.
She says "rod" to calm me.
She says "stone," "geometry."
She gets careless and turns tender.
I take advantage and sneak off.
I run and she runs faster.
I yell and she yells louder, seven demons stronger.
She catches me.
Making deep grooves from tip to toe,
poetry's toothed wheel is made of steel."
"Seductive Sadness Winks at Me."
"I'm looking for the saddest thing which,
once found, will never be lost again because it will follow
me, more loyal than a dog, the ghost of a dog,
sadness beyond words.
I have three choices.
The first, a man, still alive, calls me to his bedside
and says, in his softest voice, pray for me to sleep, will you?
Or I dream I'm beating a little boy.
I beat him and beat him until my arm is decomposing
and he's black and blue.
I beat him some more, and he laughs without anger.
He laughs at me who beat him.
In the last, and I personally create this horror,
the siren shrieks, calling a man who's already dead, and keeps
shrieking through the night till dawn and he doesn't return.
And the siren insists.
And her voice is human.
If that's not enough, try this.
I lift my son by his sensitive organs
and he kisses me on the face."
"Two Ways"
"From inside geometry, God looks at me and I am terrified.
He makes the incubus descend on me.
I yell for Mama.
I hide behind the door where Papa hangs his dirty shirt.
They give me sugar water to calm me.
I speak the words of prayers.
But there's another way.
If I sense he's peeking at me, I think
about brands of cigarettes.
I think about a man in a red cape going out
in the middle of the night to worship the blessed sacrament.
I think about hand-rolled tobacco, train whistles,
a farm woman with a basket of pequi fruit,
all aroma and yellow.
Before he knows it, there I am in his lap.
I pull on his white beard.
He throws me the ball of the world.
I throw it back."
I'm going to read two more poems.
And after each reading of the English,
I'm going to hope the tape works and play Adélia reading
the Portuguese.
This is called "Successive Deaths."
"When my sister died, I cried a great deal
and was quickly consoled.
There was a new dress and a thicket in the backyard
where I could exist.
When my mother died, I was consoled more slowly.
There was a newfound uneasiness.
My breasts were shaped like two hillocks and I was quite naked.
I crossed my arms over them when I cried.
When my father died, I was never again consoled.
I hunted up old pictures, visited
acquaintances, relatives who would remind me
of how he talked, his way of pursing his lips
and of being certain.
I imitated the way his body curled in his last sleep
and repeated the words he said when I touched his feet.
Never mind, they're all right.
Who will console me?
My breasts fulfilled their promise
and the thicket where I exist is the genuine burning
bush of memory."
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
As Mortes Sucessivas.
Quando minha irmã morreu eu chorei muito e me consolei depressa.
Tinha um vestido novo e moitas no quintal aonde eu ia existir.
Quando minha mãe morreu, me consolei mais lento.
Tinha uma perturbação recém-achada:
meus seios conformavam dois montículos e eu fiquei muito nua.
Cruzando os braços sobre eles é que eu chorava.
Quando meu pai morreu, nunca mais me consolei.
Busquei retratos, procurei conhecidos,
parentes, que me lembrassem sua fala,
seu modo de apertar os lábios e ter certeza.
Reproduzi o encolhido do seu corpo em seu último sono
e repeti as palavras que ele disse quando toquei seus pés:
"Deixa, tá bom assim."
Quem me consolará desta lembrança?
Meus seios se cumpriram
e as moitas onde existo são pura sarça ardente de memória. [END PLAYBACK]
Sorry for the quality of the tape.
There's a little buzzing.
But it was not made, really, to be reproduced.
This is called "Concerted Effort."
"The flat iron was invented because of eternal life.
Or else, why bother to crease the trousers,
if every ending is worm-eaten wood,
bones so clean there's no need for nausea?
Which is also why many physicians hatch soliloquies,
good governments govern with justice,
and I'm wearing a low-cut dress.
My desire for the handsome young man lives on.
It's written on my fingernails and grows with their roots.
Can a woman have 20 orgasms?
I don't worry about such details.
I want love, superior love.
I can tolerate only seven sorrows.
One more and I go numb playing my guitar.
Cemeteries are holy ground.
That's why they attract me, after I
get over being repelled.
Even if people insist, look, there where
your father was, a splinter of rotting wood, ribbons
of cloth and dust.
He's crossed over, I say.
This silence is a trick, sheer expectation.
It's exactly what hope is when it doesn't rattle.
I know all about the burial, the lapse, the autopsy.
I realize there are drowning victims, chopping
blocks, forged signatures.
But why do you think pendulums swing?
After the grave, the clock goes on ticking.
Someone makes coffee.
Everybody drinks it.
The boy went blind.
His mother went crazy the day after, silly the second.
And by the third, was on the front porch
leafing through a fashion magazine
because she wants a cool dress to scare off the heat.
I had intended to whine, to throw up my arms, tempted
to sin against the Holy Spirit.
But life won't let me.
And what I say ends up brimming with joy."
Now we've moved into the second book,
which is entitled O Coracao Disparado,
which I sort of loosely translated when I used it
for a title of a bilingual chap book that Livingston University
Press put out previous to this book, as The Headlong Heart,
which I almost wish I had saved for this book because it really
does capture for me a lot about Adélia's headlong-ness and her
very, very large heart.
This poem is a poem about writer's block and a very large
dry spell.
And one of the wonderful things that happens sometimes,
if you're very lucky, you end up writing a poem about how
you can't write a poem.
It's called "Not Even One Line in December."
"I never want to desire death unless out of holiness,
calling it 'sister,' as Saint Francis did.
Almost the 25th and not one line.
My hips moving back and forth, and me not
trying to contain the wiggle.
I should have walked like this my whole life
if I wanted to conquer the world.
Dusky butterflies, trash, pebbles, soapy water seeping
from the wall, things offer themselves up to me
as I roam the neighborhood.
A little girl watches from her tiled porch, and not
even a line.
My work is important because it's all I have.
In a three-bedroom house with a tired backyard,
the soul keeps moaning, ah, life.
The idea of suicide appears and floats past the TV antenna
but keeps coming back, and not even a line.
I need to confess to a man of God.
I committed gluttony.
I craved the details of other people's frailties.
And, even though I have a husband,
I explored my own body.
Not even one line in December, and I was born for this.
My soul longs to copulate.
The wise men rush past me.
The star is in hiding.
It's raining torrents in Brazil."
I don't think I ever played the second poem that Adélia was
supposed to read, which was "Concerted Effort,"
the one that starts with the flat iron that was invented
for eternal life and ends with "what I say ends up brimming
with joy."
So I'll play that now.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
O Alfabeto no Parque.
Eu sei escrever. Escrevo...
[END PLAYBACK]
I did play it?
I didn't read "The Alphabet in the Park" is what happened.
Excuse me, I can't read my own notes.
I will now read "The Alphabet in the Park,"
and then Adélia will read "The Alphabet in the Park."
"I know how to write.
I write letters, shopping lists, school compositions
about the lovely walk to grandmother's farm
which never existed because she was poor as Job.
But I write inexplicable things too.
I want to be happy.
That's yellow.
And I'm not.
That's pain.
Get away from me, sadness, stammering bell,
people saying between sobs, I can't take it anymore.
I live on something called the terrestrial globe, where
we cry more than the volume of waters called
the sea, which is where each river carries
its batch of tears.
People go hungry here, hate each other.
People are happy here, surrounded
by miraculous inventions.
Imagine a certain Ferris wheel whose ride makes you dizzy,
lights, music, lovers in ecstasy.
It's terrific.
On one side the boys, on the other the girls.
Me, crazy to get married and sleep
with my husband in our little bedroom in an old house
with a wood floor.
There's no way not to think about death
among so much deliciousness and want to be eternal.
I'm happy and I'm sad, half and half.
You take everything too seriously, said mother.
Go for a walk.
Enjoy yourself.
Take in a movie.
Mother doesn't realize that movies are like grandfather
said, just people going by.
If you've seen one, you've seen them all.
Excuse the expression, but I want to fall in life.
I want to stay in the park, the singer's voice sweetening
the afternoon.
So I write afternoon.
Not the word, the thing."
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
-- cartas, bilhetes, lista de compras,
composição escolar narrando o belo passeio
à fazenda de vovó que nunca existiu porque ela era pobre como Jó.
Mas escrevo também coisas inexplicáveis: quero ser feliz, isto é amarelo.
E não consigo, isto é dor.
Vai-te de mim, tristeza, sino gago,
pessoas dizendo entre soluços: "Não aguento mais."
Moro num lugar chamado globo terrestre onde se chora mais
que o volume das águas denominadas mar,
para onde levam os rios outro tanto de lágrimas.
Aqui se passa fome. Aqui se odeia.
Aqui se é feliz, no meio de invenções miraculosas.
Imagine que uma dita roda-gigante
propicia passeios e vertigens entre luzes, música, namorados em êxtase.
Como é bom! De um lado os rapazes, do outro lado as moças,
eu louca pra casar e dormir com meu marido
no quartinho de uma casa antiga com soalho de tábua.
Não há como não pensar na morte, entre tantas delícias, querer ser eterno.
Sou alegre e sou triste, meio a meio.
Levas tudo a peito, diz minha mãe, dá uma volta, distrai-te, vai ao cinema.
A mãe não sabe, cinema é como dizia o avô:
"Cinema é gente passando. Viu uma vez, viu todas."
Com perdão da palavra, quero cair na vida.
Quero ficar no parque, a voz do cantor açucarando a tarde…
Assim escrevo: tarde. Não a palavra. A coisa.
[END PLAYBACK]
"A Man Inhabited a House"
Death's charm, its disastrous spell, is due to life,
because heaven is to the west of my father's house,
where reside all the riches of the world and my soul.
There's a corner of the room where
I go to eat secretly, plate in hand,
from whence I see Jerusalem, its sparkling domes,
the rows of Jericho in bloom.
From that perspective, grave diseases look tame,
my cousin and her five bastard children
innocent, gun shots, alcohol, carelessness,
even fear settle in a cup of tea and sink to the bottom,
thick with compassion and sugar, indefatigable patience.
The bruised medicinal herbs add an aroma
to the holiness of the struggle to repeat oh, god, yes.
Yes, my body is weak.
Yes, I miss my bicycle, the way I would dash off
into the street, flaunting my invincible dominion
over gullies and stones.
Yes, youth affects me this much.
Yes, and my weariness, which is nothing
at all compared to what you suffered for me,
oh father on the cross.
Does the body feel pain?
This is what I ate.
Plain rice, beans, and raw onion.
But the plate had a painted border.
The spoon was tarnishing, but there were forget-me-nots
engraved on the handle.
The body experiences joy.
The tongue eats it, bright, hot, unquestionable as suns.
Do we die?
I understand mathematics better."
Adélia is a wonderful person of appetite for lots and lots
of things.
And one of the things I think maybe
that I start the introduction in this book
was my first moment of meeting her.
I had gotten a grant to go to Brazil
and bring my collected versions of her poems
and talk to her about them.
And I flew to Belo Horizonte and took a bus to Divínopolis,
where she lives, and took a cab to her house.
And I was tired and dusty and exhausted, and nervous as hell.
And she opened the door.
And in my total nervousness, I walked in and said,
I'm starving.
And as soon as it was out of my mouth, I was totally mortified.
And I couldn't believe I had just
met this person I had wanted to meet for five years.
And it was the best thing I could possibly have done.
She said, come on in!
And there was always beans and rice in the oven to put on top
and heat up.
And she said, the only other gringa I ever met
was taking Pepto-Bismol all the time
and wouldn't eat any Brazilian food.
And I sat down and ate a humongous plate
of rice and beans.
And she said, I know we're going to get along just fine.
This is called "Neighborhood."
There's a little food in here too.
"Neighborhood."
"The young man has finished his lunch
and is picking his teeth behind his hand.
The bird scratches in the cage, showering him with canary seed
and bird droppings.
I consider picking one's teeth unsightly.
He only went to primary school and his bad grammar grates
on me.
But he's got a man's rump so seductive I fall desperately
in love with him.
Young men like him like to wolf their food.
Beef and rice, a slice of tomato,
and off to the movies with that face of invincible
weakness for capital sins.
I feel so intimate, simple, so touchable
because of love, a slow samba, because of the fact
that we're going to die and a refrigerator
is a wonderful thing.
And the crucifix his mother gave him,
its gold chain against that frail chest,
he scrapes at his teeth with the toothpick.
He scrapes at my strumpet heart."
Now I'll break from the poems that are in this collection
and read just a little sampling, just three poems
from books that came out after I compiled the selection.
This is from a book called O Pelicano, The Pelican.
And it's called "The Transcription of the Body."
"I was in love with love and waited for it
under the trees, a virgin among the lilies.
I held fast.
Now I see it was a dubious fire I endured,
the same one endured by the tough women who came before me.
And it wasn't demons who placed a halo over my head
and infuriated my mother, my mother long dead,
my poor mother, her wedding dress a shroud.
And it wasn't necessary to be so pale.
And it didn't save her to be so temperate.
It was all a mistake, ash hawked as treasure.
What was in the box was nothing.
The soul, yes, was murky and no one could see it."
"Forms," this is from a book called A Faca no Peito,
Knife in the Breast, or Knife in the Chest.
"There's only one way to say to someone,
I can't get you out of my head.
The cello string vibrates all by itself
beneath an invisible bow.
And sins disappear like mice caught in the act.
My heart is astounding because it
beats and is filled with blood and is going to stop someday.
And because it becomes a pathetic
drum when you whisper in my ear, I can't get you out of my head.
Splotches of light on the wall, a small vase with three
plastic roses, everything in the world is perfect,
and death is love."
And the last one of this group, also from A Faca no Peito
is called "The Tenacious Devil Who Doesn't Exist."
"God's glory is greater than this plane in the sky.
And his love, which is where my fear comes from,
that sea of delights where airplanes crash and ships are
wrecked, oh, I know so well.
And I also know what a disastrous thing it
is to be the body of time, to exist, the intermittent terror.
Jonathan, if death is love, then why, if I'm so sure,
am I still afraid?
How can a fish be happy when I'm not?
Strange, this business of being human.
I opened the door one evening and there was a toad,
with his throbbing gullet, a gentle toad.
And I thought, it's Jonathan in disguise, come to visit me.
Even so, I shooed him away with a broom
and went to watch television.
I want to be holy like Agnes, who flies on the wings
of beetles, singing to soothe me with her little girl's voice,
'Cast off the chains around your neck,
oh captive daughter of Zion.'
Airplanes are scary because God is in them.
Embrace me, God, with your flesh and blood arm.
Sing with your mouth to keep me innocent."
Finally, some poems from the third book represented here,
which is called "Terra de Santa Cruz," which
is "The Land of the Holy Cross," which
was an early name for the country of Brazil.
And if I can get it straight, I'm
going to do these two bilingually.
The first one is called "Legend with the Word 'Map.'" And it
has a sort of a story that really tickles Adélia.
I think this was in a--
it came out in English in a literary magazine.
I think it was APR.
And a letter came to APR to Adélia and was forwarded--
without my knowledge because it was addressed to her--
was forwarded to Brazil.
And she got this letter from an unknown fan in the United
States, which was in English.
And she had to look all over Divinopolis
to find someone who could translate it for her.
And she had this letter.
She wanted to know what was in it
And it was from this guy who was a map freak.
And he wrote this incredible letter about how astounded
he was to find that there was someone way down in Brazil
writing a poem about how she felt about maps.
And Adélia was so incredibly thrilled with this that
everywhere we went in the US, this had to be on the list
of the poems that we would read.
I do like it.
It was particularly fun for her.
It's called "Legend with the Word Map."
"Thebes, Midian, Mount Horeb, Sphinx-like names.
Idumea, Ephraim, Gilead, stories that don't
demand my undivided attention.
Maps relax me, the deserts more than the oceans
I don't dive into because, even on maps, they're
deep, voracious, untamed.
How can we conceive of a map?
Here rivers, here mountains, ridges,
gulfs, or woodlands as scary as the sea.
The legends of maps are so beautiful they
make travel superfluous.
You're crazy, they tell me.
A map is a map.
I'm not, I reply.
A map is the certainty that the place exists.
Maps contain blood and treasure.
God talks to us in the map, in his geographic voice."
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
... se chama "Legenda com a Palavra Mapa".
Tebas, Madian, Monte Hor, esfingéticos nomes.
Iduméia, Efraim, Gilead, histórias que dispensam meu concurso.
Os mapas me descansam,
mais em seus desertos que em seus mares,
onde não mergulho porque mesmo nos mapas são profundos,
voraginosos, indomesticáveis.
Como pode o homem conceber o mapa?
Aqui rios, aqui montanhas, cordilheiras, golfos, aqui florestas,
tão assustadoras quanto os mares.
As legendas dos mapas são tão belas que dispensam as viagens.
Você está louca, dizem-me, um mapa é um mapa.
Não estou, respondo.
O mapa é a certeza de que existe o lugar,
o mapa guarda sangue e tesouros.
Deus nos fala no mapa com sua voz geógrafa.
[END PLAYBACK]
And this is the title poem of that volume,
"The Land of the Holy Cross."
"At my golden wedding anniversary,
greedy as the grandchildren, I'm going to eat sweets.
I will not look serene, like portraits
of women who ate and spoke little
because the monk killed himself in the thicket
outside the abbey.
It's been said before, there will be no consolation.
And there was, music, poetry, strolls.
Love has rhythms which are not those
of sadness, the shape of waves, impulse, running water.
Well then, what do I say to the man, to the train,
to the little boy waiting for me,
to the myrtle tree blooming out of season?
Contemplating the impossible makes you crazy.
I'm a lowly tapeworm in God's intestine.
Well then.
Well then?
Where were the custodian, the steward, the gatekeeper?
Where was the rest of the brotherhood
when you went out, unlucky Brazilian boy,
to meet that tree?
I am my own enemy.
Torturers go crazy in the end, eat excrement,
hate their own obscene gestures.
Unjust regimes fester.
While you were walking around in circles, divided soul,
what was she doing, saint and sinner, our mother church?
Promoting bingo, blessing new buildings, naturally.
But still, she produced you.
No one dares deny it, you and other saints
who leave behind marked Bibles.
We carry within us our own death sentence.
Love one another.
He who said whosoever believeth in me
shall have everlasting life, he too swung from a piece of wood
like a fruit of scorn.
Nothing, nothing that is human is grand.
A little girl interrupts, pounding at the door,
asking for vine cuttings.
My hair stands on end.
Like a torturer, I yank out the cutting, the eyes,
the entrails of the intruder.
And no better than Job, I repent my nonsense.
There's always someone to ask Judas which tree is best.
Lucid mad men, mad saints, those to whom more was given,
the almost sublime ones, my biggest grandeur is to ask,
will there be consolation?
These would fit in a thimble.
My faith, my life, and my greatest fear,
which is traveling by bus.
Temptation tests me and almost makes me happy.
It's good to ask help of our Lord
God of the army, our God who is a big mother hen.
He tucks us under his wing and warms us.
But first, he leaves us helpless in the rain
so we'll learn to trust in him and not in ourselves."
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
Terra de Santa Cruz.
Nas minhas bodas de ouro, esganada como os netos, vou comer os doces.
Não terei a serenidade dos retratos de mulheres que pouco falaram ou comeram.
Porque o frade se matou no pequeno bosque fora do seu convento.
De outras vezes já disse: não haverá consolo.
E houve: música, poema, passeatas.
O amor tem ritmos que não são de tristeza: forma de ondas, ímpeto, água corrente.
E agora? Que digo ao homem, ao trem, ao menino que me espera,
à jabuticabeira em flores, temporã?
Contemplar o impossível enlouquece.
Sou uma tênia no epigastro de Deus: E agora? E agora? E agora?
Onde estavam o guardião, o ecônomo, o porteiro,
a fraternidade onde estava quando saíste, ó desgraçado moço da minha pátria,
ao encontro desta árvore?
Meu inimigo sou eu.
Os torturadores todos enlouquecem ao fim,
comem excrementos e odeiam seus próprios gestos obscenos,
os regimes iníquos apodrecem.
Quando andavas em círculos, a alma dividida,
o que fazia, santa e pecadora, a nossa Mãe Igreja?
Promovia tômbolas, é certo, benzia edifícios novos,
mas também te gerava, quem ousará negar,
a ti e a outros santos que deixam as bíblias marcadas:
"Na verdade carregamos em nós mesmos nossa sentença de morte."
"Amai vossos inimigos."
O que disse: "Quem crer viverá para sempre",
este também balouçou do madeiro como fruto de escárnio.
Nada, nada que é humano é grandioso.
Me interrompe da porta a mocinha boçal. Quer mudas de trepadeira.
Meus cabelos levantam.
Como um torturador eu piso e arranco a muda,
os olhos, as entranhas da intrusa
e não sendo melhor que Jó choro meus desatinos.
Sempre há quem pergunte a Judas qual a melhor árvore:
os loucos lúcidos, os santos loucos,
aqueles a quem mais foi dado, os quase sublimes.
Minha maior grandeza é perguntar: haverá consolo?
Num dedal cabem minha fé, minha vida e meu medo maior que é viajar de ônibus.
A tentação me tenta e eu fico quase alegre.
É bom pedir socorro ao Senhor Deus dos Exércitos,
ao nosso Deus que é uma galinha grande.
Nos põe debaixo da asa e nos esquenta.
Antes, nos deixa desvalidos na chuva,
pra que aprendamos a ter confiança n'Ele e não em nós.
[END PLAYBACK]
A few more poems here.
I don't know why this came.
I was trying to think of something else to tell you
a bit of more of what Adélia is like,
since you don't have her here.
And maybe it was the, "how can a fish be happy when I'm not?"
I don't know.
We had a lot of talking.
Adélia doesn't speak English and loves trying to say the words
of English.
She told me when she first got the first poems that
were published in APR, she read them out loud to herself,
making up the phonetics as she went along.
And then her nephew came, who knew some English,
and was quite astounded at the funny way she
was saying all the words.
But I thought I'd just share with you one
of her favorite two words in English,
both for the way they sound and for the ridiculousness
of the epithet.
And that is holy mackerel, which is the way she says it.
This is called "Pieces for a Stained Glass Window."
"Does Japan really exist?
Or any country I don't know, with its parched coastline?
What's between the thighs is public, public and obvious.
What I want is your heart, the depth of your eyes,
which do everything but speak.
If you look at me in Spanish, I'll snap my fingers
and start dancing, dressed in red.
When I closed my eyes to the sun,
I saw a blueprint, perfection, for just a second
and then forgot.
Just as the saints exist, so does God,
with his unspeakable seductive power.
He's the one who made gold and gave us
the discretion to invent necklaces to wear around
our necks.
Said like that it's so pure I hardly see
the sin in buying one myself.
I've got the same desires as 30 years ago,
immutable as mosquitoes in the sun-drenched kitchen,
my mother making coffee and my father seated, waiting."
"Falsetto."
"The authorities have bags under their eyes
and practiced voices for communiques.
We guarantee the best solution on the spot.
Which spot?
The pudendum?
God already took care of that, covering it with hair.
My son was a good boy.
He would never have killed himself like the police said.
I touched his head.
It was all broken, a token of their guilt.
The witnesses vanished, lost their teeth, their tongues,
lost their memories.
I lost my son.
He greeted the rabble, speaking to them of the kingdom.
To those in need of cure, he restored their health.
Hard words only for liars, legalists
who harness on others the heavy bundles
they themselves would not so much as touch.
Oh, great shriek that I long to shriek,
hiss that would leave me empty, certain hues, tamed birds,
a yellow house with a gate and flowers thrill me.
But I can't enjoy them.
I've got to preach the kingdom.
I'd like a country place, a wisp of a farm.
But Christianity won't let me.
Marxism won't let me.
Oh, great shriek in the face of palaces, churchly or otherwise,
divided we fall, united we stand.
My swimming pool is not for recreation, said the Pope.
I have no intention of being a prophet, said the bishop.
What thick rope, what a full pail,
what a fat sheaf of bad things.
What an incoherent life is mine, what dirty sand.
I am an old woman with whom God toys.
Along with rage and shame, my appetite remains unshakable.
Fatty meats, anything flowery.
I nibble vegetables as if they were carnal encounters.
I'm afraid of death and think about it at great length,
as if I were a respectable, serious, prudent, and frugal
lady philosopher.
If someone will join me, I'll found a political party.
I'll overthrow the government, the papacy,
bulldoze all the rectories and institute my dream.
Across a plain, innumerable, the Friars descended in their hoods
like brown birds, peacefully searching for a place.
I walked with them until they came to a big house
where they found a big stove, a big table.
And they all went inside and made themselves at home,
scattering about the house like true brothers."
And two last poems here.
This is "Consecration," and it has
an epigraph from "Apocalypse, Come, I Will Show
You the Bride."
"It was at home.
Mama was cooking.
I was taking care of the baby, restless because of the boy
who was waiting for me.
The baby's wet, I called.
I'm going to change him.
Mama shot me a look.
And I went to my room and tried on dresses to wear to the door
and talk with the boy who whispered,
I want to eat your legs, your belly, your breasts.
I want to touch you.
And he was, in fact, touching me,
the way his soul shown through his eyes.
Have you changed the baby?
You're a strange one.
Stop talking to your friends and listen.
I began to cry, pleasure and embarrassment.
He looked at my bare feet and laughed.
The vibrations of the flesh sing hymns,
even those we turn away from.
Flatulence, he said in one ear.
Yawns, he said in the other.
The rhythm of pleasure.
I was worried the whole time.
And so naive and naked, he added.
A voluptuous woman in her bed can praise God
even if she is nothing but voluptuous and happy.
Poor people understand that.
Yes, like when they write on the walls, 'Us beggars salute you,
oh, God.'
He looked like an angel speaking of wisdom.
Helios, I called him, you're that luminescent.
Your body acting out your spirit.
You learn fast, praise be our Lord Jesus Christ,
he intoned from the bottom of his Christian soul,
enticing me once and for all.
Who is the Pope?
I asked, anxious to receive the sacraments.
Our father who blesses us.
And he called me cow as if he were saying flower, saint,
lucky prostitute."
This last one is from the middle book of Coracao Disparado,
and it's one of my favorites.
Called "Denouement."
I can get through it.
"I have great admiration for ships
and for certain people's handwriting, which
I attempt to imitate.
Of my entire family, I'm the only one
who has seen the ocean.
I describe it over and over.
They say hmm and continue circling the chicken coop
with wire.
See, that's where we'll put in a garden.
So what do I do with the coast?
It was a pretty afternoon, the day
I planted myself in the window between uncles
and saw the man with his fly open,
the trellis angry with roses.
Hours and hours we talked unconsciously in Portuguese,
as if it were the only language in the world.
Faith or no, I ask, where are my people who are gone?
Because I'm human, I zealously cover
the pan of leftover sauce.
How could we know how to live a better
life than this when, even weeping,
it feels so good to be together?
Suffering belongs to no language.
I suffered and I suffer, both in Minas Gerais
and at the edge of the ocean.
I stand in awe of being alive.
Oh moon over the back lands, oh forests
I don't need to see to get lost in,
oh great cities and states of Brazil
that I love as if I had invented them, being Brazilian places
me in a way I find moving.
And this which, without sinning, I can call fate,
gives my desire a rest.
Taken all at once, it's far too intelligible.
I can't take it.
Night, make yourself useful and cover me with sleep.
Me and the thought of death just can't get used to each other.
I'll tremble with fear till the end.
And meanwhile, everything is so small.
Compared to my heart's desire, the sea is a drop."
[WHISTLE]
[APPLAUSE]