By PRISCILA FIGUEIREDO*
five poems
a dilemma
Madam, your dog is eating all the macumba there.
I was already sprawled at the foot of the tree, certain that it was running
through the branches of the square.
What a spoilsport! Why did the guard come to warn me of this?
And what was “eating macumba”?
I didn't have to bang my head; was metonymy:
Your dog, ma'am, is eating all the food in the dispatch.
So what, I thought? It must be fresh, and a little
spoiled as it was, it wasn't going to hurt her.
Every thing dogs put in their mouths,
especially the mutts, as was the case.
But the boy came to warn me terrified
as if it were something of great, of great danger. Of great danger?
Intoxication was ruled out. Wouldn't it be nice if she ate candy
— this is sometimes found in dispatches, but dying from it, no
would die. It was a rare and stolen pleasure
because granted it would never be.
So where did the alarm come from?
Deed of superstition:
Madam, your dog is eating all the food from the macumba [pros [spirits.
I didn't want to dishonor anyone's ritual,
but they didn't count that those snacks,
left in the open air, on the ground,
could be covered in ants,
could they even be eaten by man, as things stand?
They would also be stealing food from the spirits.
Was his fear after all that they would be vengeful?
And rather than punish the negligent owner of the animal,
sprawled there in the shade?
Or actually the alarm was just due
to an important ethical question:
Your dog, madam, is ruining everything for the officiant:
if you wanted your husband back, he won't come back;
if you wanted a job, you skipped the job.
Envy will continue to tie a person's life,
and the credit of the pai-de-santo is gone forever.
Yes, when I imagined the whole picture, I jumped up,
and guiding me from afar with her cocked tail and cheek
I approached the animal that ate the feast
with demonic greed. I was afraid?
There wasn't much to save. Now it was pray or do
Crossing my fingers for the work to come to an end.
But what if the end was to screw someone over?
Didn't that happen from time to time?
Oh but what did I care about your purpose?
(I had to be firm in my reasoning.)
That she would come out unscathed, the magic, was the most
logical to be desired even with the ebó already
inside the animal[I].
Show
The pastor assured
that went on one leg and came back on the other.
They were waiting with their hearts
Noisy.
His wife had given them all the rope —
what a good and loyal lady she is,
in health and disease,
in life, death and what not
becomes neither
or anything else!
Forbade funerals,
faced the funeral home,
which he then handed over to God.
There were people entering through the thief,
the usual idlers,
but also those who didn't care
with nothing else in those days because they had
fear of missing the big moment.
With the prediction of a resurrection coming true,
they would have had a taste of the great spectacle,
general and future
promised by Christ and then by Paul
from Tarsus to the Corinthians. The vision would arm them
of courage to go through the last days until then,
that will be increasingly empty, if not gloomy —
even the last may still be many.
There are those who are born happy and confident,
but that's not the case for most, nor mine.
Okay, not this time. And so much the better — if it's hard
believe without the aid of a beautiful visible manifestation,
dearest of God
he is the one who perseveres without seeing anything.
Let the Scriptures be our lifeline;
with them we shall not be shipwrecked.
In the document that had a notarized signature in Goiatuba,
the pastor assured that his flesh, even without vital signs,
it wouldn't stink or fall apart. Let everyone wait!
Two witnesses plus the notary civilly consecrated
the prophecy obtained in a dream is now fourteen years old.
But these days the corpse roared with stench; occurs
that each one is the master of his nose and said to him: “I want
that you endure, without scandal,
this odor from the other world”,
and he, nose, found a way. How would it not be so
if the indomitable will of Huber Carlos Rodrigues
I would put the worms to flight and tack the flesh
what was falling apart? He was systematic and intended
a perfect spectacle without putrefaction.
Well, what tour de force it wouldn't be if it went ahead
and out of the fetid slime the spirit would make a man again.
Four days and four nights,
and no authority dared tell the people that this
everything was a tremendous bizarre, if not a whim,
as if he knows how great the fury can be
against anyone who tries to separate or dissuade him when
united by highly concentrated expectation,
as rare as a miracle.
A thousand bodies that could not stand up,
a few of them fetid, ulcerated and pustulent in life,
suddenly became watchful, or drunken with prayers,
children's energy cartoons.
The nitpicking, but also the immediate demands
of life could not distract them. held firm
around the rotting body.
If it were possible to speak of a resurrected people,
I spoke.
Poem I saw walking disguised in an article from Super interesting
“A virus is smaller than a titin.”
I didn't know what it was going to betitina,
but this repetition
syllabic, so intimate and onomatopoeic, never
would really make anyone bigger.
The nanometer runt doesn't eat,
does not breathe,
does not move or reproduce
there with yours, yours,
it does not obey Crick's central dogma.
It just doesn't obey.
Incorrect to say that he is an extremophile.
Impossible change, if it exists
is to make a copy of yourself
through an unwary passer-by,
it doesn't matter if it's a dog, a bacterium, a man.
Exist is not the right word,
because those who dedicate themselves to studying it guarantee
who does not live is not dead either.
Attend the three actual domains of Life,
but I think they form the new demonology.
by tremendous deficiency
“multiply like a Cossack army”
(which spread gloriously across the steppes
and through the centuries just to turn that simile).
How can the impossibility
result in so much dominance?
He, who is not,
without us
would not show what it came to.
In the living cell they found a mimeograph,
oh no, your deep web, and then they swarm
preparing the revolution.
Inactivated,
contribute to the enemy
in an intermediate zone
in which they are less than themselves, but still
know what shibolleth of your tribe,
keep the old look
to seduce as a god would seduce.
(Who was born with more cunning
for mimesis, us or them? lived for
see that everything is war and copy.)
They don't plot, they just act.
according to your intimate tendency.
Are they powerless? Are they despotic?
In itself, by itself or for itself?
They are a matter for metaphysics,
concluded the scientist. Another might say
that are really politics.
Help yourself
The beauty of untouched dishes.
The delicacy, ready, she looks at you
in the face, without embarrassment, without duplicity.
It's on,
clear as the cards we decide to put on the table.
Knows nothing of social differences,
knows nothing about souls, numbers, how many mouths
there will be to feed, if it will be a handful
of shareholders or people lined up in the street.
If it will be the case of lining or feeding,
whether it will be for the soul or for the body.
Refined or communal,
celebratory or trivial,
once on the table
she looks — the caviar roe too
they look at us, silent and sweet.
Every dish feels worthy to be tasted
preceded or not by a prayer,
coming from this or that kitchen.
the sloppy
it is not known to be wrong. the exquisite
he knows nothing about himself, he doesn't think he's superior.
Some and others are unaware
the circumstances of its production
the quality of its components.
That is why
tender calves as loves blink
indistinctly for everyone
if everyone could appear around them.
They lie down, they are lying down.
wait
know as much or know nothing as beans
(they are like four year olds).
Some and others ignore the quality
of dinner sets, ignore whether they will be
tasted with cutlery or by hand.
Were it not for the frame of the continents
spread out on the tablecloth or the wood
they spread over the land and would keep waiting.
In some cultures, we know,
that's what happens and it's the same thing.
Certain diners feel especially called upon—
“That dessert was looking at me!” —
a part of it is true; another is a psychic projection
because there is no being special in this case,
no food has diner preference.
Where it is placed, it stays. uncovered, it will be
available. Revised, accepted.
If they spit on the plate where they ate it,
it will hurt the cook, not her,
who fulfilled his role.
It sounds obvious and it is.
more than obvious
it is the nature of this naked and specific object
of hunger and desire.
“The best cook is hunger”,
this destroyer of culture,
this founder of culture.
If they advance directly on the tableware,
you won't care,
contrary many times to those who serve it.
That's what it's for, to be served.
“Help yourself!”, “Let me serve you.”
Observe how she, the very direct object,
became elliptical in these sentences, better saying
merged with the verb.
"I'm already served, thank you."
Food — being,
have been.
Poetics
Funny thing is a poem;
funniest thing yet
is he going out of his way
why were you pecking
or dreaming. or were you
exhausted. I was no good for anything else
practical or theoretical, so to speak.
To write an article, go to the bank,
to the fair, to meeting, to the beans.
To “discuss politics” — exhausted!
Wrists tingle, hang down.
Luckily you type; the pen would weigh.
You are neither pained nor happy,
you are more especially for nothing.
Then your weakness comes into play
productive material, resistant to centuries.
Your trodden spirit gives way, slacks,
lower the back in the pasture of the tongue,
it licks thin veins of water.
No, no one is here to sweat it out.
*Priscila Figueiredo is a professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Matthew (poems) (well i saw you).
Note
[I] Reading the poem, a friend, Jussara Magalhães, warned me that the guard's insistent interpellation might have occurred because he feared that the dog would swallow inappropriate things with the food, sometimes embedded there, such as glass. In fact, as a child I heard many of these stories, which I later judged to be inventions by adults to prevent us from getting close to the sweets offered in these rituals. In any case, I did some research on the subject, and in an article, for example, by Norton F. Corrêa, on the dispatch of batuques in Rio Grande do Sul, it is explained that the use of ground glass, among other stratagems , was due to the intention of irritating the god by spoiling his pleasure of eating, in order to make him take revenge on the person whose name is written on the note placed near the food, the name of an enemy of the officiant, and not of him, the deceiver. In any case, the poem was already ready when this other possible explanation for the watchman's despair appeared, and, if I failed to raise all the hypotheses for it, its effect on me, the reflection on the dilemma it triggered, as well as my resistance it is rather that they seem to me to be the most important in what I have written.
