FIRST CHICO BUARQUE is out.

ALL POETRY is out.

DESIGNS (my book of poetry) is OUT,.

See  my page at Amazon books.

 The Fate of Chosen Garb  (per the theme SANTA CRUZ WEIRD)

 

The array of human figures in the environs surrounding 

the municipal wharf is verging on the astounding

Fully bald emboldened gurus bounding forth

Nearly deaf musicians sounding tunes out

Square accountants rounding numbers loudly up

Padres in fresh robes founding new missions

Gardeners grounding wheat on planks of stone

Parents hounding their poorly entertained children

Resounding stellar shapes confounding dumbfounding

Frustrated astrologers left holding bags and pounding

on the lone fisherman's sweater

 The Poet Makes it to Seventy

 

Adriano Espínola

 

translation by Charles A. Perrone

 

For Paulo Henriques Britto, Geraldo Carneiro and Antonio Carlos Secchin

 

 

 

Somewhat nonchalantly

do I turn the corner,

a bit more inclined,

of 70.

 

(Feast of wild wolves, 

of crazy years gone by 

spent quietly on the sly).

 

Someone soon draws closer

and presses on my chest;

an other from me 

comes loose to stay silent.

 

Who are they, I inquire,

my body right next

to the blank wall and spire,

who divide me 

thusly in two,

between dreams of what I was and

the unforeseeable awakened state 

of what comes later?

 

And now I know: 

old friends' shades, hello!

do come light up 

my ancient

temples

and the gestures and signals

that I emit in passage!

 

I exclaim, expectant,

without nostalgia or grief,

upon safe arrival

from the pandemic

and this voyage through time,

castaway from love 

and failures,

by the dock and reef

of my own step-filled mime.

 

 

 

 

Who, I go on to ask them,

invents me

every second

each and every day

upon turning the corner

of 70?

 

A sudden shade obstinately

comes forward to illuminate me.

And it is Nobody.

And it's Odysseus with his sword.

Portuguese explorer and native shaman

in combat on a beach

in the past, beyond reach.

 

Steel, stories, and struggles

in the preterite

(that belong to me as well)

now traversing me,

there by that wall

with the present's flat scrawl,

memory of the future.

 

And now I'm already myself,

I who am naught,

sad creature so content,

weaver of the art of deceit

(that is poetry, 

that strangest of arts

of prodigal amazements),

like a blind man

on a sidewalk,

touching aside apart,

where I am passing by

and where I shall always go.

 

And I arrive 

by dint of some

arcane mischief

at the corner of 

these unexpected years,

being what I am:

a common man,

spinning flesh and earth 

of fateful chance,

70 times in one.