Chimarrão e poesia

The Missions payador
Feels the heat of the embers
Beating hard on the face
And goes chewing the taste
Of the old bitter infusion,
Feeling the weight of the burden
That some ancestor commands
While the world expands
And my heart grows wider

Always the same liturgy
Of the mate of my people,
There's always something new
In the light of another day,
It seems that the geography
Is changing - from hour to hour
And the payador gets scared
Facing a convulsive world
Feeling the barbaric impulse
To send himself away!

Long before the cave
I think - while I improvise,
In the fields of paradise
The boss who governs us,
In his eternal wisdom
And eternal knowledge,
Gave the song and the melody
To the birds and the winds
So they would be complements
Of what we call poetry!

Consequently - Adam,
Was born an inspired poet,
Even somewhat confused
For lack of erudition
And composed a pagan poem
In his rough way,
For his companion,
The woman - poem of beauty,
Inspired - for sure
On a vine leaf!

The Minstrels - the Aedos,
The Bards - The Rhapsodes,
Great poets - all of them,
Handling voice and fingers
Unraveling secrets
In their rough wanderings,
The guitars instead of spears,
Harps - flutes - mandolins,
Sowing through the ends
The décimas and the romances!

Both the eastern poets
And the poets of the west,
Each a stream,
All of them sources,
In the four cardinal points
Spreading songs
And - in the wake of the legions
Of the Lusitanian preface,
The last flower of Latium
Gave us Luiz Vaz de Camões!

In continental Brazil
The caravels arrived
And with them came
The poems - with Cabral,
For an immemorial landmark
In these wild forests
Perpetuating melodies
Of immortal prominence:
Castro Alves and Bilac
And Antônio Gonçalves Dias!

In this hemisphere's garron
When the homeland dawned
Poetry also emerged
In the gaucho's side
In the baptistery's basin
Of the sandbanks and flowers
And the horde of barbaric
And illiterate riders
Gave birth to the first poet
In the payadores' song!

And it was he - this vaqueano
Of the primitive scenario,
Author of the native poem
Mixed with fur and marrow,
Of pampeiro - of minuano,
Emerging big dreams;

Hidalgo - Ramiro - Hernández
El Viejo Pancho - Ascassubi
Suckling from the same udder
From Guaíba to the Andes!

There's a great variety
Of poets in my country,
Of the most varied hue
Full of Brazilian essence,
From Carlos Drummond de Andrade
To the most cultured and refined,
But I prefer Balbino,
Juca Ruivo and Aureliano,
Weaving hand in hand
With a red ox's hide

João Vargas - and Vargas Neto
And Amaro Juvenal,
Each a source
Illustrating any dialect,
Handling the alphabet
In its most austere form,
The disciples of Homer
Of great soul and light verse,
Always using a