Your words cherish me, even if you shout,
but some crucial silences resound heavily,
making my entire soul into pieces.
Le Voyage d’un Pèlerin.
Le voyage d’un pèlerin.
Par Edilson Afonso Ferreira.
French translation, by Rebecca Banks and the author, of
“A Pilgrim’s Journey”.
Je me promène par sourde, presque secrètement,
comme un fantôme par des coins d’une ville endormie,
peur qu’ils pourraient réveiller et me emprisonner
pour mourir à l’aube sous une lumière
si impitoyable et si mortelle.
Publié en Poésie Bleu Souterrain, Juin 2015.
Camarades sur la Route
Camarades sur la route.
Par Edilson Afonso Ferreira
French translation by Rebecca Banks and the author, of
“Comrades on the road”
Je crois qu’il ya un complot en cours
ce que implique chacun d’entre nous.
Je ne sais pas quand ni où elle a commencé,
ni qui a lancé il.
Ils occultent de moi leurs entretiens
juste je aborde quelqu’un d’entre eux.
Il me semble une communion furtive et étrange,
des saints et des démons, anges et démonistes,
même gobelins.
Ils se rassemblent pour conduire l’humanité,
en battent pour nos âmes, une par une.
Quelqu’un a été dit, il est une cast
qui débarrasse l’humanité de démolition
et préserve elle en vie à travers de la route,
en fermentant nous avant la bataille finale.
Publié en Juin 2015, Poésie Bleu Souterrain.
Zola’s Mission
Two years ago, my wife brought home a dog.
Her name, Zola, a black female, smart and active.
Then, I scolded and inveighed at her, for I had never liked dogs.
Unwilling by me, she remained in the backyard.
We have three beloved sons, and, last week,
by a big muddle, they fought and thumped each other.
My wife, nervous and strained, abandoned home,
leaving me and going to an apartment we possess.
That night, I phoned her and ask why she had not taken Zola.
It is an apartment, she said, a big one, but
Zola does not fit here.
Take her, I said, it is a matter for you to solve.
Then, at the eleventh hour, she passes by the corridor and says:
I am back home, will remain with you.
I learned, once more, that, in my life,
everything has had a reason to be,
even just an animal.
Zola rescued a thirty-five years’ marriage.
By Edilson Afonso Ferreira.
Published Newsletter TWJ Magazine, October 2014.
Published in The Lake, October 2015 issue.
The Christ I love more
We must follow Christ and learn from Him,
unquestionable Master of love and tolerance.
Son of God, yet a brother, He bequeathed us
divine words and deeds that survive forever.
The way He loved us, great and pure,
no one had or has ever equally leveled.
His sacrifice on behalf of humanity,
that of then and of coming times,
unworthy and infidel ones, perhaps,
just by this,
took Him to redeem us from bitter destiny
But, aside from His Divinity, His Grandeur,
do not forget the passage of Matthew 21-12,
when He entered the temple of His Father.
Then, not by a conversation or dialogue; there,
“He cast out all them that sold and bought”,
“overthrew the tables of the moneychangers”.
I love this Christ, so human and so brother,
Who did not conceal His anger, as one of us.
By now, in our time, to honor our Lord,
we have failed to call up one Saint Fury,
like that of our Savior.
Published in TWJ Magazine, October 2014 issue.
Published in Dead Snakes, February 07, 2016
Rebirth
I was asleep in a dream full of nightmares
and ate scraps of hope, milled in the impersonal
and mechanical time machine.
Scraps that fed me to be no more than a dry tree,
struggling to break free and unravel from roots
that held me to the ground.
I prevailed over fate that once deceived me,
and now walk and will spread my life around.
I wish to distemper, hallucinate, and extrapolate,
horrifying who has enchanted and eluded me
in that dark and deaf land, that was not mine.
I will go, doubtlessly a renewed man, in search
not of a drop of water but of one rain that rains
thunder and lightning, maybe even the deluge
that has baptized our era.
I will reap fruits that, blessed by my hands
and hard a toil,
will surely make me more and more strong.
I will make love to my wife in sheets of soft Chinese silk,
and we will be asleep in a bed of fragrant Lebanon woods.
Not that I deserve more than Moses,
who only had a glimpse of the Promised Land,
but, of this new one, that I am to conquer,
I will take secure and lasting possession.
Published in the April 2015 issue of The Gambler.
Published in the February 2016 issue of Indiana Voice Journal.
http://www.indianavoicejournal.com
Published in 7th Circle Pyrite, Nov 18, 2023
http://www.7thcirclepyrite.com
Published in Fevers of the Mind, July 14, 2024
http://www.feversofthemind.com
Published in Voices 2025, May 2025
A Man’s (respectful) Prayer
My God, why don’t you come?
You, who are the Creator,
and see what your creation became
and see how are your people living?
You know how hard and harsh our toiling
since we were banished from your side.
How much time will we endure alone?
When and where our meeting?
Meeting of reason and faith, and passion.
End of the longing for you and for our past,
for the primeval wellspring that outpoured us,
long, long ago,
for the Being we venerate, and, some, still love.
For one manor house, once inhabited
in the Paradise Land, which was relieved
not by one, but by four rivers.
Where the manor house, where the rivers?
Where you, so far from your creature,
aside from humanity, deaf for our grief?
Give us at least one of your four rivers
to mitigate and quench eternal thirst of fatherhood.
First published in the April 2015 issue of The Gambler.
Published in Dead Snakes, March 21, 2016.
http://www.deadsnakes.blogspot.com
Published in Feed the Holy, July 24, 2025.
http://www.feedthehol.blogspot.com
Lights of Innocence
On “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, oil-on-canvas painting by John Singer Sargent, 1886″
Two girls lighting Japanese lanterns,
early evening in an England’s garden,
late nineteenth century.
Preventing the dark night, arranging
for so happy a party.
The painter has had no opportunity to speak,
but now we know,
like old Greek priestesses,
in white gowns,
also offering prayers on glowing tapers,
relieving unsure forthcoming days.
The purity they have lightened that night
touch us until our present days and nights.
Published in the spring issue 2015 of The Provo Canyon Review.
http://www.theprovocanyonreview.net.
Published in Synesthesia, Vol.4-1, March 02, 2016.
http://www.synesthesialitjournal.com
Published in The Basil O’Flaherty, July 2016 issue.
http://www.thebasiloflaherty.weebly.com
Published in The Ekphrastic Review, Aug 9, 2020
They must keep far away
People never at least imagine the way the two of us live.
Here we remain for so long, hidden and anonymous,
sheltered by these mountains and this incredible sky,
living side by side and close enough one to the other.
I am afraid someone might feel on the air some trace
denouncing somewhere lasts a bit of the Lost Paradise.
May fate be able to keep our country veiled forever,
for the welfare of all of them.
Foreigners’ eyes and hearts do not work like ours.
If they arrive, never would learn to walk our ways,
and we would regret seeing them stumble and stumble.
Published in Amomancies, 18-04-2015.
Blessed by Fire
There are some secrets that belong only to us,
like our love’s beginning – how, when, where.
They must be surely concealed from everyone,
for people never would understand that story.
Flame that rounded us like sacred aureole,
sternly, firmly and mercilessly imprisoning.
Unknown power coming from so long past
that shoved us into passionate inner circle.
No one knows,
at least fancies,
on that first day,
what kind of fire blessed us forever.
Published in Amomancies, print and online issue April 21, 2015.
