CHALLENGE

I write with silent shock
My fingers possess a common feeling:
They seek simple forms.

My anxiety and secrets rest
in my hands:
stack of sentimental reflexes

The mysteries were bled
and my pen is my soul.
Who will be able to detain life
that runs through my hands?

(1969)

REQUEST

Of the gardener they ask for the rose.
Of the judge they ask for justice.
Of the poet they ask the truth.

Why does one ask for a rose
when one knows that off the branch
it will live for short time?

Why does one ask for justice
when one knows that he who owes
will pay yet during his lifetime?

Why does one ask for the truth
when everybody knows how to ask
and few know how to answer?

(December/1975)

PST! DA SILVA

"Blessed is he who gives
to drink to the thirsty"

Poor tatters
that at night tremble.
Poor you
because the wind is cold
and the rain falls.
Your name? I don’t know.
Maybe Chico, maybe Xavier,
Pst! Da Silva
or a João nobody at all.
(1967)

IT WOULD NEVER BE TOO MUCH

One day would like
to make time stop
and put everything in place:
nobody would ever suffer
and love would never be too much.

If that day comes,
everybody will embrace,
everybody will love,
everybody will hear the lament of the sea.

(February/1976)

POET FROM THE PROVINCE

The poem was born in the provinces
- And now, poet, what is left to you?
- The challenge of a choice only:

Bury, ashamed, your verses
or throw, into the world, the seed.

(September/1974)

DAYDREAMING

Because I don’t have a tree
on which to engrave your name,
with smoke
I wrote it in space.
And with gracefulness
it floated to the corners of the city,
like in a fairy tale: full of liberty.

(Zurich, May/1976)

DISTURBANCE

In the passage of time
child’s wooden horse
became a television film.

(July/ 1975)

BIRTH BY THE SECOND

A child was born
It died in the difficulty
A star shone
indicating the way
They departed from far
Joseph and Mary
A child was born
in a stable
Is the PEACE in twenty-four hours?
No, but in every second
a child is born in the world.

(1967)

PREVISION

The poet’s provincial verses
one day will know the world:
- I will cast all of them into the sea.

(July/1975)

WHO AM I?

Am I the midnight angel
or the morning devil?

The angel that announces love
and liberty
or the delacerating devil
of hearts and agent of evil?

Am I a man looking for libertinage
or a poet looking for liberty?
(1977)

REPORTAGE POEM
(For Florisvaldo Mattos)

Fact
Live
Price
- news -
A short news?

Full
ugly or
colored
- technique -

Technical notice:
hunger – full

Live – dead

It’s a headline
look at the report.

(1968)

JET PRESS

The rumor of the past,
the meeting on the corner
and curiosity transformed
the news into necessity.

From the friendly communication
or of any notice
a new item must come forth,
rich in facts and full of haste.

It ages quickly
- It is a consummate necessity
in the newspaper and on television,
in the super market and at the bars.

(1974)

REMINISCENCE

Childhood goes by
Nostalgia remains
It doesn’t retain
Nostalgia comes,
It doesn’t go by.

(1967)

RUNNING WATER

In a deep well
I caught running water
soiling its purity
It fled in a white cloud
and, like rain, it remained pure.

(1974)

NAVIGATING

I made a little boat of paper
where I wrote my feelings.

When the rain came
it navigated
through flooded streets of the city
with the rain I lost my feelings –
(1976)

CANNONS OF AMARALINA
(For Ruy Espinheira Filho)

Of Ruy's, Marinha
appeals to me. I would like it to be mine
such beautiful poetry, that creates tenderness.
Reading his verses,
the water nymphs appear,
the fine sand
and the cannons of Amaralina.
(May/1974)

KOHOUTEK

May your figure
not profane the poetic temple
or the poet loses the truth.

In the labyrinths of the Universe
may your light not serve as an adventure
or be dogma of a new era.

May your light serve to eliminate
the shadows of man.

May the insidious sweetness
of your popular image
liturgical and little seen,
return to men
the dignity that was affronted
and leave us that peculiar taste
of PEACE that the world is forgetting.
(1973)

THE OPENING

In unforseen life
I found verses and smiles,
doubts, debts
and the promise of an opening in Paradise.

I don't find, it's a fact,
an adequate opening for the car bought
out of a sight.
(1974)

DILUTED VERSE

On a desert street I found a verse
In order not to lose it in the palm of my hand
I wrote it.

Rain without importance
washed my hand and diluted my verse
that ran on the asphalt and disappeared.
(1974)

PERFECTION
(For Guido Guerra)

I felt the poem
I calculated the feelings
but I didn't write:
It was too perfect to exist.
(1971)

SAD SUICIDE
Piu, piu, piu.
The Tanger's offspring
tried a solitary flight
towards the sun.

It fell in a pan of honey.
Honey, sticky, molasses.
Poor Tanger,
it died
from all the honey it drank.
(1974)

I WILL LOVE YOU WITHOUT PANIC

It's suitable to love
while I live
fragile mortal
without force to think.

I will love without fury,
like one who isn't in hurry and whispering,
like one who asks pardon.
I will love without panic.
(1974)

ANONYMOUS PURITY
(for Julieta Isensée)

From the peaks
flow the fountains
of fresh water.

I will drink of this transparence
in the hope of restituting to my soul
the anonymous purity
of the first beating of my heart...
(1974)

OF A UTOPIAN VISION
(For Jorge Amado)

The morning sun liberated me
with its shining rays
and I killed my thirst
in the forest of wisdom.
I drank the sap of its trees
and I grew roots
in the unpolluted earth.
(December/1973)

 PAULA'S SMILE
(My daughter)

A smile
long
without artifice
or vice.
A smile
pure,
enchantment,
of child.

It is the smile
that I have in memory
of distant moments,
in the hour of embrace
from the encounter and from weariness.
(1974)

URBANIZED

The urban poet
no longer sings, he cries.

He cries the bell, the whistle,
the scream and the hymn,
the fair and the prayer,
haste and stress.
(October/1974)

 VERTICALITY

In the vertical growth
of a city
the humility is buried of the universal man.

I cried drops of inspiration
because of the lack of humanity
of this theatrical life.
(1974)

POLLUTION

Full of fear and enchantment
I smelled a broken lily,
thrown, lost in the corner
of that garden, of thorns
and roses, next to the street.

Quivering I breathed its perfume
and the scent of the poet,
already polluted, smelled nothing...
(1974)

INVERTED VALUE
Pass, pass
little bird.

If you no longer are
afraid of the scarecrow,
who will man fear?
(July/1975)