I cried when I left Paraty, as the coach drove up
past and away from the modern church building, doors open and suits on a Wednesday night, I cried for the heat on a scrubbed boat deck and the silence of an island’s forest, I cried for the cannons on the harbour and the cave under the waterfall, for coffee from the farm house wood stove with sugar cane,
sat unnoticed in a shade by a window…
…The sun, always the sun, has ground it’s way under the surface of the old town, into stones, plaster, iron and wood.
It’s hourly, daily, course has rutted the roads over time, Inked beneath the surface with traceable lines the sun’s arced
engraving path could be plotted here, but you have to close your eyes to see it.
I had jumped off the shore into old town each day to swim and pick coral from reefs of bent old houses bright white, red blue, and push my hand through the thin surface swell of atmosphere.
Following the gold road to the sea with deeper currents, past the ocean rocks of white washed churches, time gathered crustations on the walls, in swells breaking either side and down streets I swam and when the deep pressure of presence and current of place became too much, lurched up for air
Someone in the old mission church, with the ear of God,
must have asked, as the candles bent and struggled, that Grace would make each visitor leave something, take something,
I cried when I left Paraty.
Mix
Brazilian Version
We Will Grow Old From Hammocks As chickens walk beneath and an old cockerel too tough to die Stands defiantly by the door frame pacing. Paintings of children on aqua washed walls drink steam from The coffee pot, fire lined and stained, The long Latin sun will roast the air above the town Days of short mornings and three afternoons We will make love in waves of orange light Chasing our ghosts through our rooms, The things we only see and hear embraced. In the orange sea we will be younger than Younger than before we met, Lamps swing through long nights when time is suspended, We will forget that time light is limited, in slow pendulum days We will grow old from the hammocks She Sits She sits cutting lengths of ribbon from the sun, sharp long scissors that trap and sever not pulling a thread, at different times of day the catcher harvests different shades, with a basket on her hip, from many places in the season of the sun dial. By the fields of sunlight where before there was fear now her vulnerability only brings pleasure, she is so aware of colour hears it more than sees it. She collects the ripest tip as it grows in dark length across the hours on the leaf. The ribbon she trims holds medals for the brave, seals Prophecies and Judgments ties hair as the girls dance. From the present she harvests what she sees before the minute hand scythes through it. Lengths taken from the basket, are worked on in the night when not one person is awake. The metallic call of the red kite is caught in nets as it falls from the sky. Sewn with clear water onto cloth, and the whistles from the moor stones fly down long traps of bird catcher's netting until they struggle at the end. Teased out they are spun and as twine threaded through an iron needle they edge the border of her most shaped and tailored dress. The dress she wears when the heat is in her heart, beneath her ribs, the kind of heat that has come up from the summer ground, the kind of heat that swells the rose hip in Autumn, She sits
We will grow old from hammocks
Drawing on off-green beans.
That lap against the walls,
Our songs down our corridors,
We have ever been together,
Copyright G S Buss 2009