I Cried When I Left Paraty

 

I cried when I left Paraty, as the coach drove up Main Street

past and away from the modern church building, doors open and suits on a Wednesday night,  I cried for the heat on a scrubbed boat deck and the  silence of an island’s forest, I cried for the cannons on the harbour and the cave under the waterfall, for coffee from the farm house wood stove with sugar cane,

sat unnoticed in a shade by a window…

 

…The sun, always the sun, has ground it’s way under the surface of the old town, into stones, plaster, iron and wood.
It’s hourly, daily, course  has rutted the roads over time, Inked beneath the surface with traceable lines the sun’s arced
engraving path could be plotted here, but you have to close your eyes to see it.

 

I had jumped  off the shore into old town each day to swim and pick coral from reefs of bent old houses bright white, red blue, and push my hand through the thin surface swell of atmosphere.

Following the gold road to the sea with deeper currents, past the ocean rocks of white washed churches, time gathered crustations on the walls, in swells breaking either side and down streets I swam and when the deep pressure of presence and current of place became too much, lurched up for air

 

 I cried when I left Paraty,  a town with so many lovers but it would remember me, it’s pourus walls and stones record.

Someone in the old mission church, with the ear of God,

must have asked, as the candles bent and struggled, that Grace would make each visitor leave something, take something,

I cried when I left Paraty.

Mix




Brazilian Version

  

Translation by Heliana Pacheco

We Will Grow Old From Hammocks

We will grow old from hammocks

As chickens walk beneath and an old cockerel too tough to die

Stands defiantly by the door frame pacing.

Paintings of children on aqua washed walls drink steam from

The coffee pot, fire lined and stained,
Drawing on off-green beans.

The long Latin sun will roast the air above the town

Days of short mornings and three afternoons

We will make love in waves of orange light
That lap against the walls,

Chasing our ghosts through our rooms,
Our songs down our corridors,

The things we only see and hear embraced.

In the orange sea we will be younger than
We have ever been together,

Younger than before we met,

Lamps swing through long nights when time is suspended,

We will forget that time light is limited, in slow pendulum days

We will grow old from the hammocks