MELO NETO, Jose Cabral de
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…..
O meu nome é Severino,
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….. My name is Severino, I have no Christian name , There are lots of Severinos (a saint of pilgrimage) so they began to call me. Maria's Severino . There are lots of Severinos With mothers called Maria, so I became Marias’s
of Zacarias, deceased.
There are many in the parish because of a certain colonel whose name was Zacarias who was the very earliest senhor of this region.
to Your Excellencies
The grave you’re in Is measured by hand, The best bargain you got In all the land. – You fit it well, Not too long or deep, The part of the latifundio Which you will keep. – The grave’s not too big, Nor is it too wide, It’s the land you wanted To see them divide. – It’s a big grave For a body so spare, But you’ll be more at ease Than you ever were. – You’re a skinny corpse For such a big tomb, But at least down there
You’ll have plenty of room
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Landscape of the Capibaribe River
§ The city is crossed by the river
as a street
is crossed by a dog,
a piece of fruit
by a sword.
The river called to mind
a dog's docile tongue,
or a dog's sad belly,
or that other river
which is the dirty wet cloth
of a dog's two eyes.
The river was
like a dog without feathers.
It knew nothing of the blue rain,
of the rose-colored fountain,
of the water in a water glas,
of the water in pitchers,
of the fish in the water,
of the breeze on the water.
It knew the crabs
of mud and rust.
It knew silt
like a mucous membrane.
It must have known the octopus,
and surely knew
the feverish woman living in oysters.
The river
never opens up to fish,
to the shimmer,
to the knifely unrest
existing in fish.
It never opens up in fish.
It opens up in flowers,
poor and black
like black men and women.
It opens up into a flora
as squalid and beggarly
as the blacks who must beg.
It opens up in hard-leafed
mangroves, kinky
as a black man's hair.
Smooth like the belly
of the pregnant dog,
the river swells
without ever bursting.
The river's childbirth
is like a dog's,
fluid and invertebrate.
And I never saw it seethe
(as bread when rising
seethes).
In silence
the river bears its bloating poverty,
pregnant with black earth.
It yields in silence:
in black earthern capes,
in black earthen boots or gloves
for the foot or hand
that plunges in.
As sometimes happens
with dogs, the river
seemed to stagnate.
Its waters would turn
thicker and warmer,
flowing with the thick
warm waves
of a snake.
It had something
of a crazy man's stagnation.
Something of the stagnation
of hospitals, prisons, asylums,
of the dirty and smothered life
(dirty, smothering laundry)
it trudged through.
Something of the stagnation
of decayed palaces,
eaten
by mold and mistletoe.
Something of the stagnation
of obese trees
dripping a thousand sugars
from the Pernambuco dining rooms
it trudges through.
(It is there,
with their backs to the river,
that the city's "cultured families"
brood over the fat eggs
of their prose.
In the complete peace of their kitchens
they viciously stir
their pots
of sticky indolence.)
Could the river's water
be the fruit of some tree?
Why did it seem
like ripened water?
Why the flies always
above it, as it about to land?
Did any part of the river
ever cascade in joy?
Was it ever, anywhere,
a song or fountain?
Why then
were its eyes painted blue
on maps?
─Translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith