Conquistense Poetry 04: Mindless activism in funny verses
Zines are a phenomenon that happens all around the world. Young people love to see their words printed on paper, as well as consume whatever there is of subversive that can be found circulating the campus, the skateboard park, or the sardine-can-garages they blast their music at. There's a need for activism in every young person, a spirit desire for the teenage riot. But if there's a thing I know about stinky little punks is that it's absolutely rare to find a Sonic Youth, id est, someone that uses l'opium comme Baudelaire. Therefore, zines are usually quite strange, because despite the inherent coolness of it all, there will always be something lacking: always holes in the cheese, always editing flaws, always misused potential.
Today I bring to the table not exactly a zine, but a book masked as zine. The most cheaply produced possible kind of book, from the youth to the youth — and always dreaming for a further reach: "Um Grito na Imencidão", by Mizael Bispo da Silva.
I could not explain this book better than the author himself, therefore in the next few paragraphs you will see, both transcribed and translated, the Introduction and the Biography, typewritten by Mizael; later on, a small highlight selection of my favorite parts in the book. This way I hope you, the reader, understand by yourself what made this (oh, so) eccentric piece of writing so entertaining to me.
Biography
Mizael B. Silva, nasceu na cidade de Poções sudoeste bahiano e desde de muito criança já mostrava uma queda momentanea pela poseia. Mas só com quatorze anos foi que realmente assumiu sua personalidade poética, literária, quando ao léo noturno declamou ao vento "Sonhos e Poemas com um poder imensamente dramático no peito que o levou à direção geral de um grupo de teatro amador, do qual permaneceu até 1982. Foi quando o grupo veio à decripitação total.
Caminha ainda em passos tropegos e as vezes vacilantes, mas com certeza esta entre os melhores de Vitória da Conquista dos quais poucos chegaram lá, no auge da poesia.
(In translation)
Mizael B. Silva was born in the city of Poções, BA, and from a very young age showed a growing passion for poetry. But it was only at the age of fourteen, that he'd really take in his poetic, literary personality, when at random he declaimed to the nocturnal wind, "Sonhos e Poemas", with such immense dramatic power that it led him to direct an amateur theater group, in which he remained until 1982. That's when the group came to total decrepitude.
He still walks, with stumbling steps, but is certainly among the best in Vitória da Conquista, where few have come to reach, at the peak of poetry.
Introduction
Plantei meu grito de liberdade e busquei transmitir na capa deste livro, o erro e a ignorância de parte do povo brasileiro. A fome mata, desnutre, deseduca e consome o corpo do ser que não come; por isso lanço meu grito de liberdade na aparência exposta, desse livro do qual faço uma crítica destrutiva à fome, pois dela, é gerada a inconsciência de dias terríveis e que num futuro não muito distante, haveremos de sucumbir com essa desgraçada que comeu durante séculos, o miolo, a carne e o sangue de nossa gente. Famintos é que não podemos pensar na realidade das letras das palavras e as trocamos num infinito e monstruoso grito de na imensidão.
(In translation)
I've planted my cry of freedom and attempted to transmit, in the cover of this book*, the flaws and the ignorance of part of the Brazilian people. Hunger kills, malnourishes, miseducates and consumes the body of the being that does not eat; so I launch my cry of freedom in the exposed appearance of this book in which I wrote a destructive critique towards hunger, for from it, the unconsciousness of terrible days is generated, and in the not so distant future, we will succumb to this fiend who has eaten, for centuries, the brains, the flesh, the blood of our people. Hungry, we can't think of the reality of the letters of the words and confuse them in an endless and monstruous scream of/in infinity.
*The cover is a tracing of "Retirantes (Migrants)", a painting by Candido Portinari; and the title of the book has an intentional mispelling.
Next up, verses:
T'escondes (Hide)
"[...]Que seja o mundo pela segunda vez
Entoado pela água, que varra do centro
Da terra este ódio esta mágua.
Que nasçam novamente flores, que em todos
Países do mundo perdurem os amores
Ou simplesmente a natureza que o homem
Devasta por ser sua única fraqueza."
"[...]May the world, for a second time, be sung* by the water,
To sweep from the center of the Earth this hatred, this sorrow.
May the flowers once again be born,
May love endure in every country in the world,
Or at least, let survive nature, which the man
Ravages for being his only weakness."
*In the original, this exact word is written as "Entoada", which I believe to be a spelling mistake, with the intent of writing "entornada". "Entoada" is the same as "sung" or "chanted", while "entornada" could be understood as "sunk", but most correctly, "spilled", as in a liquid being spilled. All in all, it represents the idea of something being lost/destroyed by the power of the water; in this case, a second divine flood.
O que somos? (What are we?)
"Para que morrer
Se já não nasço mais?
[...]Meu pai, olha os peixes que morrem
Veja o que faz a máquina que criastes:
[...]Criastes a tua imagem na terra
Mas não a educou
Deixou que moessem a cana
E fizessem álcool para se embriagar.
Que plantassem a erva
E se entoxicassem para se embriagar.
Armas mortíferas que reduz
O homem ao pó por ignorância
Enquanto outros andam sem
Tomar banho na alma.
[...]Gente matando gente e levando consigo gente
Animais morrendo acusados de nada.
[...]Na calçada da rua onde dorme o mendigo
Só tem mau cheiro dos riscos que passam por alí
[...]O mau cheiro do mendigo
É puro, mau cheiro de natureza
Não tem mau cheiro fabricado."
"Why die
If I won't be born again?
[...]Father, look at the fish that die,
See what the machine you created has done:
[...]You've creted your image on Earth
But didn't raise it.
You let them grind the cane
And make alcohol to get drunk;
You let them plant the weed
And get intoxicated to get high
—Lethal weapons that reduce men to dust through ignorance
While others wander without bathing the soul—
[...]People killing people and taking with them people,
Animals dying accused of nothing*.
[...]On the sidewalk of the street where the homeless sleep,
The only stench is from the risk they face there
[...]The stench of the homeless is pure,
Reek of nature,
Not a fabricated foul smell."
*Here, I really am not sure if the author is considering the animals as people, as in "animal people" — which can be backed by "dying accused of nothing"; or if "People killing people and taking with them people" compares the killing of humans by the hands of other humans to instinctual, animalistic actions. That's why using ponctuation and writing clean verses is cool, kids! Even in free-hand poetry, even if it looks cooler without it. That's a lesson even I have to learn."
Alerta (Warning)
"[...]Vida, cinzas e pó.
Vive o homem cheio de progresso
E matando aos poucos
A razão da vida.
Progresso sem estrutura,
Progresso armado
De explosões nucleares."
"[...]Life, ashes and dust.
Lives the man, full of progress,
Killing little by little
The meaning of life.
Progress without structure,
Progress armed with nuclear explosions."
Pra que sois rico? (Why are you rich?)
"Pra que sois rico
Se esta desgraça que carrega
Sois mais desgraça que o desgraçado
Que vive mas calçadas — deitado
No jornal de ontem."
"Why be rich if this disgrace you carry
Is more disgraceful than the disgraced
That lives on the sidewalks — laying
Upon yesterday's paper."
Well, this book was quite the find. Donated in 1987, was probably published around that time, hard to say. All copies corrected by the author himself, using a ballpoint pen, for the first edition.
P.S.I try to imitate the poor grammar in the translation, so don't be surprised if it doesn't sound right.