O Navio Negreiro/Um índio

The Slave Ship/An Indian

It was a nightmarish dream... the deck,
Clanking of irons... cracking of the whip...
Legions of black men as dark as night,
Horrifyingly dancing...

Black women, lifting to their breasts
Thin children, whose black mouths
Are watered by their mothers' blood:
Others, young women... but naked, frightened,
In the whirlwind of dragged specters,
In vain anguish and sorrow.

One raves in anger, another goes mad...
Another, numbed by torments, cries and dances there.

Lord God of the wretched!
Tell me, Lord God!
If it is madness... if it is true
So much horror before the heavens...

Who are these wretched ones
Who find in you
Nothing but the calm laughter of the crowd?

Tell me, you, severe muse,
Free muse, bold!

They are the children of the desert
Where the earth weds the light.
Where in open fields
The tribe of naked men roams...

They are the daring warriors,
Who with the spotted tigers
Fight in solitude...
Simple, strong, brave men...
Today miserable slaves
Without air, without light, without reason...

There on the endless sands,
Of the palm trees in the land,
Beautiful children were born,
Gentle maidens lived...
A caravan passes one day
When the virgin in the hut
Dreams of the nights in veils...
...Farewell! O hut on the hill!...
...Farewell! Palm trees by the spring!...
...Farewell! loves... farewell!...

Lord God of the wretched!
Tell me, Lord God!
If it is madness... if it is true
So much horror before the heavens...

O sea, why don't you erase
from your waves
From your mantle this blot?
Stars! night! storms!
Roll from the immensities!
Sweep the seas, typhoon!...

And there is a people that lends its flag
To cover so much infamy and cowardice!...
And lets it transform into this feast
Into an impure cloak of cold bacchantes!...
My God! my God! but what flag is this,
That impudently flutters at the masthead?!...

Golden-green banner of my land,
That the breeze of Brazil kisses and sways,
Better to have been torn in battle,
Than to serve as a shroud for a people!...

...But it is too much infamy...
From the ethereal plain
Rise up, heroes of the New World...
Andrada! tear this flag from the skies!
Columbus! close the door to your seas!
......

An Indian will descend from a colorful, bright star
From a star that will come at a dizzying speed
And will land in the heart of the southern hemisphere
In America, in a clear instant
After the last indigenous nation has been exterminated
And the spirit of the birds from the clear water sources
More advanced than the most advanced
of technologies

He will come fearless like Muhammad Ali
He will come, as I saw, passionately like Peri
He will come, as I saw, calm and infallible like Bruce Lee
He will come, as I saw, the axé of the afoxé Sons of Gandhi
He will come

An Indian preserved in full physical body
In every solid, every gas, and every liquid
In atoms, words, soul, color
In gesture, smell, shadow, light, sound
magnificent
At an equidistant point between the Atlantic and the Pacific
From the resplendent object-sim the Indian will descend
And the things that I know he will say, do
I cannot say in an explicit way

He will come fearless like Muhammad Ali
He will come, as I saw, passionately like Peri
He will come, as I saw, calm and infallible like Bruce Lee
He will come, as I saw, the axé of the afoxé Sons of Gandhi
He will come

And what will be revealed to the peoples at that moment
Will surprise everyone not for being exotic
But for the fact that it could have always been hidden
When it will have been obvious.
He will come