As much as they promise me eternal life,

however much they attest I shall live in Eternity,

I confess I love much more this body I was given,

as well as the dearest, sometimes also enchanted,

way of living we created for ourselves.

I am not able to conceive if there are other worlds

or other beings – people who think, speak and love

just like us.

I only know that an old book says we were made

on the sixth day of sainted and sacred a week,

in the image and likeness of the Creator.

Then, I think we could apply to be His sole heirs,

and, still on our dear earth, enter into possession

of the promised land, that Canaan where milk

and honey flow, and evil never finds shelter.

 

This poem and all others at this blog, authored by Edilson Afonso Ferreira ©

I do not want to wait one minute more to say

to this world some words stuck in my throat:

I love all of you!

Whites, yellows, browns, blacks,

elderly, young, children,

even the evil ones, because they must have

some strange and shady missions,

often (or always) hidden just to themselves.

It is true that daily we catch ourselves watching

a lively musical from Broadway, and then,

horrible some Greek tragedy.

As mentor and director of our tour on earth,

God uses the talents of His creatures,

like a painter mixing colors in a masterpiece.

We must accept the tones we have been given,

for it is the redemption of a destiny and a duty

allocated to us, it would be good to believe,

even before the beginning of our own time.

I am a friend of the past.

I have good relations with it.

I do not frighten myself when I hear the gong ringing

and it says, hello, I am here, I reminded of you today.

There is no time or day set for its appearance.

Today it reminded me the ways in the paternal farm,

where, solitary but not sad or haunted,

I walked in my childhood and youth.

We said of the blue-back grassquits,

which landed on the wire fences, sang,

and gave three leaps, up and down.

We said of when I was walking alone on the tracks,

wanting to sneeze, had to wait to cross someone,

and so sneeze, for it was needed to hear from him:

God help you!

We reminded the stone mill, operated by the water wheel,

that grinded the kernels producing corn meals,

used for the baked cakes on the wood-burning ovens,

one’s brick-made at the open air in the yard.

Also remembered the school of D. Maria Dias,

who lectured in the cellar, where we studied

until the third year, for the fourth one had to be

at the town school.

There were some comrades, who came annually

from extinct mines where gold was exhausted,

to work on our crops: coffee, corn, rice and beans.

We prayed the rosary every night, and, on Sundays,

our family went to mass in the town church, smoothing,

for years and years, the bank with our name inscribed,

friends we were of God and of the parish priest.

Times of old, when we were happy,

and we did not know.

So happy that we lived in Paradise,

which was the name of that hinterland.

Really, some of us came to believe

the bible had borrowed it for the land

of one of its best known stories.

 

This poem and all others at this blog, authored by Edilson Afonso Ferreira ©

It was not on the straight, wide and sunny road,

that I saw you.

It was on the road’s bend, so switched a curve that

almost returned to the point from which I had come.

It was in a dark and gloomy day,

where wind did not dare to appear

and people sought to hide within themselves.

Now I know that fate had given that afternoon

as precious gift to me, when set us face to face.

Then, your beauty shone, flashed like a torch,

or a beacon in dark nights driving the sailors.

You enchanted me, like a serpent with her prey,

but not devoured, only arrested and gave me love.

In the days following our meeting,

they say the sun had shone again.

It does not concern me,

for I have won you.

Sitting by the road’s edge, I watch life go by.

I see men, women, old and young people.

They carry on their faces their realities and, beyond,

I try to imagine what really lead them to move on,

but cannot be seen: their well-kept secrets and desires,

their high esteem, their own motto, their ego.

They are striving to be individuals,

rather than simply one more.

Sometimes I see even myself,

mixed in the crowd, perhaps a little lost,

but firmly believing to be on the walk too.

I feel we are all connected in an invisible web

and hope that each of us will reach,

at its own time, the promised land,

that Canaan where milk and honey spill

and evil never finds shelter.

 

This poem and all others at this blog, authored by Edilson Afonso Ferreira ©

I have neither the time nor the talent to sing praises

to all that have enchanted me in my life on earth.

Someday, I will miss these happy and satiated eyes,

my ears, even my heart.

We, who now share this land and these airs,

will be no more than sparing remembrance

for those who will remain.

In the short time given to me, I want to suck in fury

all the honey I can get by on my lips, living the life

just like that poet of sweet memory, burning my candle

on both sides, my light frightening and pushing away

all scarecrows on duty.

Maybe in another life, unknown to me,

they give me other days,

who knows, even Eternity.

But they never will give me, however,

those scarlet red sunsets preceding soft nights,

where I have met lovely and unforgettable women,

sisters whom our race has refined in such a beauty

never seen anywhere or anytime else.

 

Published in Free Lit Magazine, volume 5, Issue 3, The Beauty Issue, May, 29th 2019.

http://www.freelitmagazine.com

Published in Tree House Arts, July 24, 2019

http://www.treehousearts.me

 

I walk in the streets, alleys and squares,

I see and hear all kind of people,

I still feel even a little of their souls.

Whites, blacks and yellows,

adults, children and the elderly,

they are my fellow ones, comrades

on the biggest walk, in route

to the admirable new world,

the land promised long time ago.

Instead of, perhaps, should I go

back to the sixth day of one holy week,

to ask our Creator if this is the way

He had thought for His people.

Also, ask if it would not be a time of forgiveness,

disarming some cherubim’s flaming swords,

still on guard at the Paradise Gate.