Meu fado

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Fado
(a found poem)
 
 A cry for hope.
 
Tenderness?
Sure, but so little.
 
Just because a swallow dies, spring does not end.
 
The soul gets tired.
 
The fingers take orders from the heart.
 
We leave our bodies when we sing.
 
The alchemy of sound and poem,
it’s inside us from birth.
 
**

Memory?
 
I cannot remember if
there was a candle
on the clothed table
set for one.
 
I do recall the vinho verde
chilling in a teakwood bucket,
poured quietly between 
sets of fado, smoldering,
mournful--
 
tearful singer, wet cheeks lit
by dying candlelight.
 
I remember.

 
**
 
In the Vapor and Din
 
Listening to Amalia with windows
wide open,
saudade in winter
evening gloom.
 
My new guitarra portuguesa
yearns for me to learn, to teach
old fingers new licks, and I dream
 
I am wandering calcadas in Lisboa
inventing my own heteronyms, concocting
poems with vastly different pens.
 
I greet Fernando Pessoa,
“Bom dia, Senhor. I saw you sitting
outside A Brasileira today but
you were not actually there
nor anywhere else.”
 
“That is how I prefer it,”
he replied without inflection
then vanished precisely
in the vapor and din.
 
I awaken to Amalia singing
life’s last song,
to gray-soaked murk and
swirling fog.
 
The music pours through
my confused heart.
 
My weeping eyes listen
to the distant wild
ocean wind.


(c) Eric Walter 2022