Adeus a Sete Quedas

Seven falls passed by me,
And all seven vanished.
The roar of the waterfalls ceases, and with it
The memory of the indigenous people, pulverized,
No longer causing the slightest shiver.
To the dead Spaniards, to the dead explorers,
To the faded fires
Of Ciudad Real de Guaira will join
The seven ghosts of the murdered waters
By the hand of man, owner of the planet.

Here once echoed voices
Of the imaginative nature, fertile
In theatrical dreamlike performances
Offered to men without a contract.
A beauty-in-itself, a fantastic design
Embodied in cascades and aerial bulges
Showed itself, undressed, gave itself
In free union to the human ecstatic sight.
All the architecture, all the engineering
Of ancient Egyptians and Assyrians
Would in vain dare to create such a monument.

And it dissolves
By the ungrateful intervention of technocrats.
Here seven visions, seven sculptures
Of liquid profile
Dissolve among computerized calculations
Of a country that is becoming less human
To become a cold corporation, nothing more.

Movement becomes a dam,
Agitation becomes silence
Corporate, of a hydroelectric project.
Let's offer all the comfort
That priced light and power generate
At the expense of another good that is priceless
And unredeemable, impoverishing life
In the fierce illusion of enriching it.
Seven herds of water, seven white bulls,
Of billions of integrated white bulls,
Sink into a lagoon, and in the void
That no form will occupy, what remains
But nature's gestureless pain,
The silent reprimand
And the curse that time will bring?

Come, strange peoples, come, brothers
Brazilians of all faces,
Come see and preserve
No longer the natural work of art
Today a colorful postcard, melancholic,
But its still shimmering specter
Of iridescent pearls of foam and rage,
Passing, circling,
Between destroyed hanging bridges
And the useless weeping of things,
Without awakening any remorse,
No burning and confessed guilt.
(“We take responsibility!
We are building a great Brazil!”)
And blah blah blah...

Seven falls passed by us,
And we didn't know, ah, we didn't know how to love them,
And all seven were killed,
And all seven vanish into thin air,
Seven ghosts, seven crimes
Of the living striking life
That will never be reborn.