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de ti, mas ficou perfeita,

concreta, fria, lunar.

Como pode nossa festa

ser de um só que não de dois?

Os dois ora estais reunidos

numa aliança bem maior

que o simples elo da terra.

Estais juntos nesta mesa

de madeira mais de lei

que qualquer lei da república.

Estais acima de nós,

acima deste jantar

para o qual vos convocamos

por muito — enfim — vos querermos

e, amando, nos iludirmos

junto da mesa

vazia.

THE TABLE

And you didn’t like parties …

But what a party, old man,

we’d throw for you today.

Your sons who don’t drink

and the one who loves drinking,

seated around the big table,

would forgo their sad diets

and forget their complaints,

we’d have good-hearted fun

and end up baring our souls.

You’d hear things, old man,

that would stun your ninety years.

We wouldn’t alarm you, though,

since with smiles on our faces,

the plump chicken, a choice

Portuguese wine, and a thousand

things from Nature’s bounty

that someone would prepare

and copiously serve up

in a thousand Chinese tureens,

we’d make you understand

that it was all in jest.

That’s right. Your tired eyes,

which are still able to read

across miles of field and spot

in those miles a calf gone astray

in the blue so blue,

would look into our souls

and see that rotten mud

and stare at us with sorrow

and curse us with fury

and gently forgive us

(forgiveness is a ritual

of parents as well as lovers).

Everything forgiven,

deep down you’d feel lucky

to have sons like us …

Truth is, you big old rascals

turned out a lot better

than I bargained for. Chips

off the old block, I guess …

Falling silent, with an arched

brow you’d call up a fond

and not entirely remote

memory, and laughing inside

and seeing how you’d thrown

a bridge from the crazy

pacing of your own father

to the horsing around of your sons,

knowing that all flesh

aspires to degradation,

but on a path of fire

and under a sexual spell,

you’d cough. Ahem, hey kids,

don’t be foolish. Kids?

A bunch of louts in our fifties,

balding, used up, burned out,

yet in our chests we preserve

intact that boyish candor,

that scampering into the woods,

that craving for things forbidden,

and the very simple wish

to ask Mother please to sew

not our shirts but rather

our torn and haggard souls.

What a great Minas dinner

it would be … We’d eat,

and eating would make us hungry,

and the food would be a pretext.

And even without any

appetite, we’d slice

and nibble until everything

was gone, tomorrow be damned.

Have some black bean tutu.

One more crackling, come on.

And the turkey? Fried manioc

flour needs to be washed down

with a shot of good cachaça,

and don’t forget the beer,

that true-blue companion.

Just the other day … Is eating

so crucial that only a fine

meal can bring to light

the best, most human part

hiding within us?

Is drinking so sacred

that only after he’s tipsy

can my brother tell me why

he’s miffed and shake my hand?

We guzzle, we gorge: how sweet

the smell of this food, how deep

run its Portuguese-Arab roots,

and how holy this drink

that makes us all a single

hundred-handed glutton,

braggart, and champion!

We even have the sister

who left us behind. A rose

by name, she was born

on a day just like today,

to make your birthday special.

She was a rose-amelia,

a name with a hint of camellia

and a much more delicate flower

than a rose rose, and she lived

much longer than her name,

but all the while she cloistered

the scattered rose. Beside you,

look: she blossoms again.

And here we have the eldest.

A quiet and devious sort,

he wasn’t priest material;

he loved immoralities.

Then time did to him

what it does to everyone,

and the older he gets

the more he’s your perfect

picture without being you,

so that if I unexpectedly

see him, it’s you who loom

before me in another

old man of sixty.

And here’s the learned lawyer,

the family college graduate,

but his most learned letters

are the ones written in blood

or on the bark of trees.

He knows the name of the tiniest

flower and of the rarest

fruit born from a genetic

marriage. He’s a city boy

who misses the wild outdoors

and a country boy nostalgic

for the scholar. And so

he’s become the patriarch.

Further down we have

the inheritor of your iron

will, your stoic temperament.

But he didn’t want to repeat you.

He thought it pointless

to reproduce on earth

what the earth will swallow.

He loved. And loves. And will love.

But he didn’t want his love

to be a prison for two,

a contract between yawns

and four slippered feet.

Brutal on first contact,

cool on a second meeting,

and affable on the third,

it seems he’s afraid

of being, fatally, human.

It seems he feels rage

but that honey transcends his rage,

and what clever, crafty ways

he has to fool himself

about himself: he wields

a force he’s unable

to call just kindness.

Look who’s sitting there.

She quit talking, not wanting

to feed with new words

the discourse always humming

among those of us less guarded.

She quit talking. Don’t take it

badly. If you loved her

so much, then something in her

still loves you, in that twisted

way of ours. (Not being

happy explains everything.)

I realize how painful

these family occasions are,

and to argue now

would kill the party, killing

you — no one dies

just once, nor once and for all.

Lots of lives will always

remain to be consumed,

owing to the clashes

of our blood in the different

bodies where it’s dispersed.

Lots of deaths are always

waiting to be slowly rein-

carnated in another dead soul.

But we’re all alive.

And not just alive: we’re happy.

We’re just like we were

before being us, and no one

will say that any of your children

were missing. There, for instance,

sitting at the corner of the table,

not with humility and perhaps

because he’s the king of conceit,