De palmeira em palmeira

 

Em algumas manhãs Emereciano chegava cedo na praça do Carmelo, olhando de longe horizontes cortados pela linha dos montes da serra do mar. Sem minas, sem sal, sem a precisão de voltar, ficava ali até o sol chegar alto, olhando barcos de pesca retornando e turistas recém-despertos perambulando pela beira do cais. E esperava que as portas do outro lado da praça se abrissem, e o cheiro de peixe fritando lhe convocasse para uma outra procissão. 

Ferrolho I

Medo verde. Quantas prisões não ousam dizer seus nomes.

Silêncios

Quando Emereciano chegou ali pela primeira vez, era noite de frio. O lugar não tinha mais de seiscentos moradores mas a proximidade do porto garantia algum movimento. Descer a serra era empreitada de muitos dias, molhados em águas torrenciais nos meses de chuva. Mata quase virgem onde abundavam jequitibás, guapuruvas, num mundo de troncos e cipós. O cheiro das orquídeas impressionando tropeiros, e o rugido de onças em noites de lua.

Nas curvas do caminho, clareiras abertas aqui e ali na picada descendo, os olhos se enchiam na visão do mar. Águas que curavam, diziam uns, as muitas ondas.

Trazendo carga das minas, Emereciano voltava levando sal. Fez isso por muito tempo, descendo em noites de lua. Durante os anos, enquanto esperava, se acomodava no largo da igreja do Rosário em silêncio. Fumando.

Behind another blue

She could not leave

"Foi por amar que ela se amasiou com a tal solidão do lugar..."

Os anos de homilías, as preçes, deixavam marcas nas pessoas e nas coisas.
Depois que o café foi embora, enquanto os morros da região podiam enfim reclamar outra vez o que lhes havia sempre pertencido, fechando caminhos, cercando a cidade alimentada por fantasmas de escravos e de viajantes de tropas, os que ficaram se refletiam em sermões. Recitando hinos, repetindo sacramentos, tocando em solo santificado como uma ponte para a salvação, agarravam-se a poderes que não podiam ver.
E ali, por tanto tempo, ela esperou.

Fifty four years through the door

Priest's door

Uma botica, um casarão

Ali no inteiror incontáveis estórias de noites e amanhecencias

Do outro lado da praça

Do outro lado da praça

Strawberries plantation

Depois da guerra, eu sonho com um campo de morangos. Vou fazer no asfalto mesmo minha horta, e um dia, amanhecendo, verrei morangos crescendo vermelhos cor de sangue em frente à minha janela.

Se eu não trouxesse minha própria terra, em quantos anos esse asfalto viraria um jardim?

Mais do Mesmo - sem os morangos

Cadê Alice?

De um outro patio

Marianna tinha perdido as chaves de casa.Olhava do alto dos viadutos carros e pessoas la embaixo. Ouvia suas respiracoes, suas saudades. Sem asas, pensava algumas vezes se doeria cair, largando-se dali concreto abaixo, pela janela sem vidro.

Em tardes de sol e nuvens era mais facil persistir. Resistir. E revoar com os olhos, acompanhando pássaros impossíveis, pardais açodados, potes de plantas vazios nas janelas dos vizinho.

Lembrou de impossíveis amoreiras, do cajueiro em frente à casa, de amêndoas nas calçadas. De um céu azul sem nuvens. Daquele calor.

Around Northbend

Silently, after clouds, after rain.
It's sunny to find the sea.

Electric Farm

senza parole, yet..

Windmill farm

it was summertime when they crossed that border. half-empty packs on their backs, they came across the windmill farm. not a graveyard. Instead, a promise of lighter mornings behind those hills. Brighter, these dreamed promises appeared, although embroidered in much longing for a land they would not see again in their lifetime.

last highway

at the end of the road, the sky was still pretty blue.

Laying there, I had a feeling of a continued fall, the world slowly turning around, while Nepomuceno walking away unabashed, never turning back to look at the spot where we had splashed, not once slowing the pace to smell that scent of freshly wet grass in a summer morning, unabated by the threads and "laces" of all those low growing bushes wrapping around his feet while he walked back to the road, to the worn out pavement still reflecting last night's rain, while my eyes letting me know they were about to close again, one last time.

I could see we'd reached the end of things, the last illuminated point at night, after which all that blue started  slowly to melt away, impossibly pixelating on faded grays, the pavement dying at a distance, exposing stones and dried mud where no electricity would ever reach. A silence of bits and of a smile-only cat figure sitting on a pole, the scent of palm wax on recently cleaned wooden floors, so many years ago that it had become just a fleeting glimpse, a faded gray:  a life I had no idea, anymore, full of cartoons watched on technicolor, the Saturday mornings' truck selling eggs and vegetables. The windmill of a lifetime slowly swirling around that blue sky, further exposing those interrupted cables. What a jump - I barely heard me say, what a splash this had been. And as it were I could not move, and it had finally come to me.

And why on earth my last thoughts were going to this middle-aged woman dancing at a disco in the Philippines, in the eighties of my budding years? Slowly dancing at a feminine voice, "here lies love, here lies love.."

Cameos

Leonora had seen winters there, all right. impatiently waiting, she had seen snow falling for longer than she could remember. All those months during which the lake turned into ice and ancestral paths were reestablished between the island and the house. Ice skating, illegal fur traders, bricks heating bed covers, and the view from the balcony, which had now grown interrupted.

Long evenings, she thought, get me down. I wish I could sit outside and Rashid, ah, Rashid, would arrive at once. Bringing news of my sister. A photograph, perhaps just enough to show her face once more, swimming miles at that time of year on warmer lands. Here, a decaying doll silently longing for her return.

But what, now that the weather is warm and Rashid is gone? Through my opened window, I think of freshly squeezed lemons and of a Martinique I am not about to see again. And of Marion.

Lenora's mind is failing. Her age weights on her body, frail fingers pressing long gone ivory keys in the afternoons. Most of the time she forgets things. Except for intervals of clarity each time growing shorter, balcony, island, lake, floral arrangements, the world, are all involved on a ever thickening haze. A slumber  she has learned to compare to sleepwalking, and which grows heavier with time.

Dressed in lace and silk, She wears cameos and keeps her hair tightly held on the back.

Sometimes she thinks about the children she did not have, on how they would have looked lovely running on the balcony, or through the grassed patch leading to the lake. Perhaps - no, certainly - they would have been as beautiful and charming as those Marion had had. Or did not she? Perhaps Marion did not have children either after all, although, like herself, she had married many years ago, soon after they left the boarding school. And then, also as Lenora, outlived her husband.

Perhaps she also kept the pictures they took during the school years. All those pictures which, although faded, still filled the room with perfume and slowed down her heart a little. As if despite all these years it could still wiggle and weight, gently expanding and irradiating warmth through her body.

"Yes," Lenora thinks sometimes, during rarefied moments of clarity, "we could have had beautiful children."    

ladeiras

era junho: capuzes, neblina, silencios, inverno. Apenas mulas de sal parando antes de marchas de muitas léguas de volta ao mar. Levando impossíveis pedras ate o porto do reyno.

Se eu tivesse olhos, repisava todas aquelas pedras.

do rés do chão

Ainda cheguei a ver antes da queda, no segundo imediato. E depois, enquanto acordava lento. Meio-dia de sol e o cheiro de terra mijada, curral de gado, açoiteras penduradas nos alpendres. Aqui o gosto de barro seco na boca, o mundo transformado em ervas ressecadas: pleno agosto. A bicicleta retorcida, o corpo dolorido. De longe, o verde daqueles campos turvava. Entre silêncios de chocalhos, meu avô nem me ouviu morrer.

marbles, fables, and other paths

He worked for years behind those walls. Silently, landed pins on shoe soles, tied leather knots, crunched peanuts during burning seasons. I had never walked by those factory walls before. All those water lilies impossibly blooming in august, under no sun to be seen. Silently.

Giaccomo had a wife and three daughters. Arrived there before the war, silently, weary, but holding some hope. Manzinni, se chiamava il padre suo. Era morto da anni. Had not ever dreamed he would meet Marta, and so soon, after all.

four o'clock, before the rain

each day waitin' for the rain. The silence of lilies and daffodils entertaining insects. We were all at the tipping point of the cape: further west there was only water.