Well, here is my life. Ready to be used. Life that neither guards nor shies away, scared. Life always at the service of life. To serve both what is worth and the price of love.

 Even though the gesture hurts me, I don’t shrink my hand: I move forward carrying a branch of the Sun, even wrapped in dust, inside the coldest night the life that goes with me is fire: it is always lit.

The sweet and violent way of my life comes from the land of the ravines: its taste of transparent black water.

Life comes in my chest, but it is she who takes me: burning firebrand, veiling, sunflower in the dark.

I carry a scream that grows more and more in my throat, nailing its sad aftertaste in the truth of my singing.

Wet and muddy song of a boy from the Amazonia who saw life grow in the center of firm land. A boy who knows the coming of the rain from the shivering of the greens and knows how to read the messages that arrive on the wing of the wind. But it also knows the time of fever and the taste of hunger.

In the waters of my childhood I lost my fear among the squalls. That’s why I move forward singing.

I am in the center of the river, I’m in the middle of the square. I walk firmly on my floor, I know I am in my place, like the pot on the fire and the star in the dark.

“What happened doesn’t count?” will inquire the deprived mouths. It never ceases to be worth, what passed teaches us with his claw and his honey.

That is why I walk like this on my way now. Publicly walking. No, I don’t have a new path, what I have is a new way to walk. I learned (what the path taught me) to walk singing as it suits me and suit the people who go with me. Because I no longer go alone.

Here I have my life: made in the image of the boy who continues to roam the humble fields and share his song in the same way his grandfather distributed cocoa and turned the harvest into an island of good help.

Made in the image of the boy but in the likeness of the man: with all he has of springtime of brave hope and rebellion.

Life, enchanted house, where I live and you live in me, I want you so real, smelling of mango and jasmine. May you be dazzled by the tenderness of a girl rolling on the grass.

Life clean tablecloth, life laid on the table, life vigilant fire, life stone and foamy trapdoor of poppies, sun coming down in the sea, manure and rose of love: life.

You have to deserve it.

 

“A vida verdadeira” by Thiago de Mello (Cris’s very draft first attempt of translation from Portuguese into English)

 

 

Dear Caminoheads,

Honoring Steve-O, honoring Phil, honoring us all, pilgrims, and honoring my Brazilian father (whose 78th birthday is today and is who more than 30 years ago introduced me to this poem of Thiago de Mello).

“What I have is a new way to walk” Loves

Cris