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Callaloo 28.4 (2005) 891-893



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Minister of Saudade

1.

The water is full of blue paint
From all the little fishing boats
Corralled for Sunday, abob in the breeze.
What kind of game is the sea?

Lap and drag. Crag and gleam.
That continual work of wave
And tide, like a wet wind, blowing
The earth down to nothing.

Our lives are small. And mine
Is small and sharp. I try to toss it
Off into the distance, forget it
For good. Then my foot steps down

Onto an edge and it's mine again,
All prick and spine. Like a burr
Deep in winter fur. And I am
Most certainly that bear. Famished,

Just awake to spring, belly slack,
Eyes still weak to the light. And where's
My leash, my colored ball? Where
Are the little fish I'm to catch in the air?

The sky here is clear of cloud and bird,
Just the sun blaring steadily through ether.
What moves is invisible. Like music.
You move in it, into it. It feels

Like nothing, until it lets you go. [End Page 891]

2.

An old woman and a boy sit in a doorway
At the top of the hill in Pelourinho. Her mouth
Chews the corner of a towel like an engine,
Churning its way toward progress. Industry.

That's one way of describing how she moves
From table to table with just her eyes, looking
From what she wants to you and back again
While the boy sleeps. His shirt asks, Quem

Tenh Jesus no ❤? And you remember those old
Drawings of Christ with his hand raised to knock
Against a shut door, that look of transcendent patience
Bathing his face. This woman wants your beer,

And she rises to her feet to prove it. The boy's head
Rolls back against the wall and his mouth
Hangs wide, like the hinges have sprung. Life rises
And falls under his shirt. Maybe his heart is so full

It will keep him from waking before the woman's
Good and drunk. Maybe the beer goes straight in
Like a spirit, luring her mind elsewhere, free as the voices
That float above the top of Pelourinho and out to the sea.

Some of them beg without cease. Some are singing.

3.

Igor, I wake in my hotel
And hear your steps
Disappearing down the corridor.

You, rushing away again
Into some small kitchen
On the far side of the city.

There's the fan, slicing the air
And sending it back, like a letter
Long with impossible promises. [End Page 892]

But I'm happy alone, I say to the woman
Beside me at the bar. We drink long
into the evening, taking hours

To clarify the simplest ideas.
She writes macumba—witchcraft—
On my napkin. Music drowns out the sea.

Deliver us from memory.

Tracy K. Smith is author of The Body's Question, a collection of poems. Her poems have also appeared in numerous periodicals, including Gulf Coast, PN Review, Harvard Advocate, and Callaloo. She teaches at Princeton University.


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