February 2, 2016

Three Poems By Edilson Afonso Ferreira: "Blessings", "Rebirth", "Silent Witnesses"

Mr. Ferreira is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than Portuguese, in order to reach more people.  Has been published in four printed British Anthologies, online or printed reviews like Cyclamens and Swords, Right Hand Pointing, Boston Poetry Magazine, The Lake, The Stare’s Net, The Provo Canyon, Amomancies, Snapdragon, The Gambler, Whispers and some others. Short listed in four American Poetry Contests, lives in a small town with wife, three sons and a granddaughter and began writing after retirement as a Bank Manager. He is collecting his works for a forthcoming book.  See more at www.edilsonmeloferreira.wordpress.com.  









Blessings.

Be blessed them
who are opening paths without knowing if will have
         the strength to conclude it;
who put to the test without further ado than the love
         for a cause and the fervor to fight the good fight;
who believe that people are made to accomplish one
         to the other, performing generous a mankind;
who are full of projects for the next years even fearful
         by the ones of the next week;
who fall in love and are not afraid to demonstrate it;   
who plant a tree fully aware never will reap its fruits  
         nor sit by its shadow, but full contented for,  
         someday, it will serve for a fellow one,
         indebted to a past kindness.


Rebirth.

I sleep in a dream generated in the nightmares
and eat scraps of hope, milled in the impersonal
and mechanical time’s machine.
Scraps that feed me to be not more than dry tree,  
searching for pulling and unwinding roots
that capture me on the ground.
I prevailed over fate that once deceived me
and now walk and will spread my life around. 
I wish distemper, hallucinate and extrapolate,
horrifying who has enchanted and eluded me
in that dark and deaf land, that was not mine.
I will go, man that have returned to be, on search
not of a drop of water but of one rain that rains
thunder and lightning, the same like the flood
that has baptized our era.
I will reap fruits that, blessed by my hands
and hard a toil,  
only will make me more and more strong.
I will make love to my wife in sheets of soft Chinese silk
and we will be asleep in a bed of fragrant Lebanon woods.
Not that I deserve more than Abraham,
who only had a glimpse of the Promised Land,
but, of this new one, God willing,
I will take secure possession.

Published in the Gambler, April 2015 issue. 


Silent Witnesses.

It is common our disputes about this and that.
Really, almost daily, we are at opposite sides.
Friends say we are not well-settled a couple,
and so misjudgment, I know, hurt us equally.
In the deeps of night, standing awake in bed,
I look at you asleep and feel all friends’ error.
Who would bear testimony of us, I ask myself.
Walls and roofs by sure know our inmost life
but they do not speak, are invalid witnesses.
I ask them if just to me would they say of us.  
They say of our confronts, furies, rough words
and revilements but also remember hugs and
hot kisses. Likewise, remember have listened      
some words like it is cold out, dear, wear your
coat or don’t be late, darling; some little things
only beloved ones are capable to.
They say we are at hard and arduous a battle,   
on pursuing, although scarce, a bit of true love.  
They also say to keep the route and fear nothing.
Tiles and bricks, indeed, they are; but perceive,
unlike our best friends, the very plot of the play.


First published in TWJ Magazine, October 2014.  

~Edilson Afonso Ferreira

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