We pretend we have our life,

even our world’s life, always under control,

from past generations to present days.

Sometimes we feel close to that certainty,

and it is good that this should happen,

giving us some encouragement on walking.

We work with the mind and the heart,

science and desire, on outlining the future,

which we desire and anticipate promising and happy.

Turning around the street corners, we find ourselves

with new, unforeseen and frightening facts,

perhaps echoes of ancient Greek dramas and tragedies,

worshiped by people of an era that has been lost,

civilizations poor of hope on the human rebirth.

Wars, revolutions, tyrannies and persecutions,

born on the drumming of soulless men,

has delayed our arrival in the promised land,

where milk and honey spur and light reigns,

frightening and preventing the evil that was once sown.

We have not come to this day yet, but are already listening

the beating of the wings of the dove’s return, like that of Noah,

bringing in the beak the green branch of the olive tree.

I have neither the time nor the talent to sing praises

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

I am sure, that, someday, I will not have these satiated

and happy eyes anymore, nor ears, even less my heart.

We who share this land and these airs will be no more

than sparing remembrance for those who will remain.

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

all the honey that 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 had met lovely and unforgettable women,

sisters whom our race has refined in such a beauty

never seen anywhere or anytime else.

I walk in the streets, alleys and squares,

see eyes, gestures, hear kind words,

feel even a bit of their souls.

Whites, blacks and yellows,

adults, children and the elderly,

they are my fellow ones, comrades

on the biggest walk, back to the origins.

Back to the sixth day of that holy week, to ask our Creator

if we are on the right route He has imagined for his people.

Also ask if it would not be the time He pardons us,

disarming some cherubim’s flaming swords,

still on guard at the Paradise Gate.

Let me tell you a secret.

Secrets are made for, at the right and appropriate time,

be revealed and exposed.

They twist and squirm, get tired of the imprisonment imposed

and ask, if not demand, their freedom.

I am a conservative man, averse to change.

I would live my entire life in the same house, same friends,

same loves;

would have my children and their children would be equally ours,

growing, assembling and sharing rooms and lives around,

indifferent to strange customs of those

who do not love and do not like each other.

We would be like a pack of wolves that are always together

and know no other world but theirs.

I like the sun that does not change

and it is the same every day,

heating and never forgotten of us.

I cannot understand the moon, its four phases and four faces,

that makes us fall in love with its brightness and then,

plays hide-and-seek, feminine and elusive wants and appearances.

I would like to have an extended spring without summer,

a fall without winter, succulent fruits the whole year,

packed with gentle rains and tender winds.

My hair could be white, but full and thick,

not meager and thin; my desire active and predatory,

voracious and powerful, facing my last season

with that child’s own haughtiness, still shaped

as a certain book says, in the image and likeness

of so noble our Creator.

 

Published in Free Lit Magazine, November 2018 issue.

http://www.freelitmagazine.com

 

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

 

Once, on my thirties, in a very little used road,

by the side of ancient and dark a forest,

I got acquainted with weird a creature,

very unlike anyone I had known.

He taught that we have been tagged with a signal,

that of being answerable for any of our equals.

He said that to as blessed man as I was,

it was not allowed to share with fellow ones,

as little as I had been accustomed to.

It seemed to me an alma mater of humanity,

came from ancient paths of our origins,

incarnate by some of our loving ancestors,

if not by all.

Since then, I have found strength, and my friends,

family and even the world as far as I reach,

I imagine, yet believe,

have improved with each new day of my life.

 

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

“Genesis 1-27 – So God created mankind in his own image,

                             in the image of God he created them;

                             male and female he created them”

 

This is how our history has been told in your book,

in the words of your saints and prophets,

a matter we must never doubt of.

Forgive us for questioning, but where

the power and mastery we should display,

which we have been looking for so long?

Where the wisdom and clearness like yours,

where our eternal life or, at least, someone like

that of Methuselah, who lived for nine hundred

and sixty-nine years?

We lived by your side so little, and quickly

You banished us, locking the Paradise Gate,

there placing those cherubims brandishing

their deathly flaming swords.

Perhaps, in lieu of immortality, we developed

greatest and warmest a love, for and from

each one of us, what You could ever dream of.

Perhaps, may You believe,

having forgotten your primeval purpose,

boldly, unconsciously,

so we would prefer to continue living.

Plowing the fields and producing wheat, oats and beans;

rising sheep, cows and pigs;

raising and spreading children and instilling in them

those dreams we were not able to turn into reality.

Throwing rails, roads, bridges and ports,

cities, skyscrapers, churches and cathedrals,

always leaving fences and borders;

creating worlds only ours,

incapable and fearful to co-habit the one

that has been given to us in full.

Boasting and toasting in life’s daily feast,

trying to write our history which has begun

in that sixth day of the divine journey of creation.

They who will read our history will know it was lived

with such a love and endearment, though absent from

the power and glory of its creator.

 

Published in the March 2018 issue of Snapdragon A Journal of Art and Healing. .

http://www.snapdragonjournal.com