by Adélia Prado
Meditation of the King Among His Troops
The great deeds of memorable men
can be chalked up to their biographers.
Biographies are made of wishes,
even those of assassins and saints.
Life – pure, raw,
naked life –
is only gravel,
a shadow play
set in motion by the hands of a child.
Just as birds migrate to warmer climes
under invisible commands, we carry on,
and even standing in line we’re happy.
Rebuke of Pride
Whatever reveals itself immediately,
pulsating, finished,
cacaphonies leaking preciousness,
sneers at the poet
busy wiping his texticles:
Oh, buffoon,
in poetry as in painting
the eyes belong on the belly.
Let it fly!
October
‘El monito,’ I would say
if I spoke Spanish
but all I know is Portuguese
and how to beat one coconut
against another, ignorant
and daring.
October brings me desires,
secret and confessable.
I shriek loudly
for the same reasons as the cicadas.
Human Rights
I know God lives in me
as in no other house.
I am His countryside,
His alchemical vessel,
and, to His joy,
His two eyes.
But this handwriting is mine.
Just Like a Man
I ate in front of the TV
without using a knife,
plate after plateful,
like truck drivers who talk with their mouths full,
and I watched the show till the end.
Into the wee hours
I watched loutish emcees
say to swivel-hipped girls
‘Here, sweetheart, hold my microphone.’
Afterwards, I fell asleep and dreamed
I was flying, pursued by soldiers,
terrified I’d get tangled in electric wires.
I woke feeling queasy and eclipsed.
A real man
would have dreamed of those swivelling hips.
Ex-Voto
One hot, bright, Sunday afternoon
I was ambushed
by pressing intestines, throes of nausea and weeping,
the desire to tear my hair and strip naked
in the middle of my life and howl
until bone dry:
What do you want from me, God?
Once I stopped crying,
the man who sat waiting said,
‘You’re so sensitive, that’s why you get short of breath.’
Which started me crying again, because it was true
and also a lie,
and therefore only half consoling.
Breathe deeply, he urged, splash some cold water on your face,
let’s take a walk around the block, it’s psychological.
What ex-voto can I bring to the Cathedral
if I’m not sick but still need a cure?
My devout friend has turned Buddhist,
I’m rooting for her to get disillusioned
and go back to praying Catholic prayers with me.
I could never be a Buddhist,
for fear of not suffering, for fear of getting all Zen.
Is there really such a thing as a happy saint or is it just the biographers
who paint them as such sunny saps?
The state of Minas Gerais is full of terrible things,
Mercy Mountain afflicts me.
Boulders and boulders
of such immediate beauty,
and then buildings sprung straight from hell,
courtesy of the uncreator of the world.
And there’s that little boy who can’t hang on much longer,
he’s going to die, too weak to suck
the string of dark flesh that’s supposed to be a breast,
lost to flies.
My heart is good
but can’t believe it.
My man showers me with gifts,
why am I given so much
when what I deserve is solitary confinement?
Words? No, I said – I can only accept weeping.
So why ever did I wipe my eyes
at the sight of the climbing rosebush
and that other thing I didn’t want –
no way did I want it right then,
the poem,
my ex-voto,
not the shape of what’s sick
but of what’s sound in me
which I push and push away,
pressed by the same force
that works against the beauty of the boulders.
Both God and the world are begging for love,
which is why I’m richer than either one.
I alone can say to the stone:
you are beautiful to affliction.
just as I can say to Him:
You are beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful!
I almost understand why I’m gasping for air.
Choosing the words to describe my agony,
I’m breathing easier already.
Some of us God wants sick; others he wants writing.
Anamnesis
At the calmest hour of the day
the startled chicken
veered madly
across the yard.
It was a barred rock,
my mother was still alive,
I was very small.
At a loss to explain such nonsense,
she said:
‘Nitwit chicken.’
I burst into tears,
it was like having no undies.
Holy Icon
Despite my desire
for repentance and joy,
I woke up belligerent,
wild to find a big knife.
The dog could tell,
the boy, too,
running for cover on his mother’s lap.
God, did I just ask You
why You’re not listening?
Or was it someone else praying for me?
Watching from her frame on the wall,
the Madonna offered her boy
to my blade.
I, who raved nightly
in the pluperfect
on account of Portugal having signed
The Treaty of Tordesillas,
burst out laughing at the squash
– as much the word as the thing –
and suddenly I simmered down, no longer concerned
that it’s not called dumpster instead.
Like a lunatic who’s all at once
done with orderlies and pills,
I sat cutting cane with my big knife,
content to suck sweetness in the shade.
Saint Christopher Transit
I don’t want to die ever,
for fear of losing the riches
unwinding outside this window.
Was that the Pony Bar, Bony Bar, or Tony Bar?
Across from the train station
the feed store announces where it’s from:
Woodland.
Reading essence in a name
we get half-truths,
because the bus stops
and life doesn’t,
because life is You, unnameable!
My husband really likes sex,
but he’s also capable
of prolonged abstinence.
That guy tending his garden
with a hatred so profound
that he almost looks innocent
means to guillotine the neighbour woman
with the radiant window.
Does any of this move You?
An hour and a half on the road
and life is so
good it hurts.
The fields are parched
but invincible
in their power to take me back…
To You? To childhood?
To the Fatherland, to the Kingdom of Heaven.
What can I do? This is a poem.
I’m really hungry, I’d like to attend mass right here and now.
Some workers give me the thumbs up,
everything grows even more peaceful.
Did I fall asleep?
Nodding off is so unsightly.
That scientist really made me happy when he said
‘Beauty is energy.’
I knew this without knowing,
and it’s going to be serious help.
The bus stops again,
bulldozers scrape
the earth ever more pure.
Sure, they’re knocking down trees,
but ecology can wait.
The power of those machines!
The way they heave the trees,
everyone stock still, watching.
It’s good to see a man at heavy labor,
a woman looking after her child –
instruction left to the priest.
I’m the same as when young,
so ignorant and so smart.
If the bus is running late,
so what, I don’t care,
I went, I came back, but most of all
I want to stay right here.
Spiritual Exercise
Mary,
Pray your Son to show me God the Father.
Images arrive:
a man, a vignette, a musical instrument,
what seems a feather fan
turns out to be a cobra head.
I want to see the Father, I insist.
Pray your Son to show me the Father.
A tooth, a vulva,
a bunch of turnips appear,
born as I was from nothing.
Mary, where do turnips come from?
Where is the Father?
Where did I come from?
A horse of sun moves on the wall.
Is it the Father?
No,
it’s just a shadow, already disappearing.
Is the Father a factory, then?
My father used to say: O Father!
And raise his arms reverently.
Grandpa, too: God our Father!
And he’d take of his hat.
So one father leads back to another
and another, and yet another,
and then, millions of fathers later, at last to Adam,
who is me, waking from a dream,
just when ‘dawn shone through, blood-red and cool’,
daughter of a Parnassian,
which so enchanted me when I was a girl,
daughter of a railroad man,
as exhausted now
as a green-grocer at noontime:
ai, father,
help me hawk the rest
of these squash,
drum the idea of seeing Father-God
out of my head,
give me a smoke and some coffee.
The State of May
Salvation operates in the abyss.
In this indescribable place,
night’s power of evil compelled me
to long for and loathe the world.
The grass was vibrating
but not for me,
nor for the afternoon song birds.
Dogs, children, yowls
were disowning me.
And so I prayed: Preserve me, Mother of God,
from the tempter and his tricks.
Lady, are you lost?
asked the boy.
The path’s over here.
I came back to myself
and recognised the stones of morning.
Neopelican
One day,
just as I’d seen a ship once,
unforgettable,
I saw a lion, close up.
He was reclining,
a raw individual soul.
A strong smell, not sweet,
mix of blood & vinegar.
I was exultant, because I had no words
and not having them would prolong my delight:
a lion!
Only a god is like this, I thought.
I superimposed over the lion
a whole new animal
radiating the aura
of his ripe colour.
Have mercy on me, I prayed to him,
constricted, grateful
to be small once more.
This super-human faith lasted a minute.
I speak with a throb:
I saw no lion,
I saw the Lord!
About the Author
Adélia Prado was born in 1935 and has lived all her life in the provincial, industrial city of Divinópolis, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. She was the only one in her family of labourers to see the ocean, to go to college, or to dream of writing a book. She attended the University of Divinópolis, earning degrees in Philosophy and Religious Education, and taught in schools until 1979. From 1983 to 1988 she served as Cultural Liaison for the City of Divinópolis. In June 2014 she received the Griffin Lifetime Achievement Award in Canada. Also in 2014 her first UK edition, The Mystical Rose: Selected Poems, was published by Bloodaxe Books drawing on Ellen Doré Watson’s translations from her two US titles, The Alphabet in the Park: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1990) and Ex-Voto (Tupelo Press, 2013).
Copyright
Copyright © Adélia Prado
1976, 1978, 1981, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1999, 2013, 2014
Translations & introduction © Ellen Doré Watson 1990, 2013, 2014
First published 2014 by
Bloodaxe Books Ltd,
Eastburn,
South Park,
Hexham,
Northumberland NE46 1BS.
This ebook edition first published in 2015.
www.bloodaxebooks.com
For further information about Bloodaxe titles
please visit our website or write to
the above address for a catalogue.
LEGAL NOTICE
Cover design: Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce.
Adélia Prado and Ellen Doré Watson have asserted their rights under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author and translator respectively of this work.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN: 978 1 78037 241 9 ebook