Poem: Match Collector I and II

The first two parts of a long poem which may or may not reach its planned destination.

Match Collector is a series of poems that is sort of all-encompassing. That is to say, I don’t know what it’s about yet, except that it is at least about living well on God’s green earth.

I hope you enjoy the first two parts, and we’ll see where the greater poem goes from here. Perhaps its disparate parts will shatter, in which case I will attempt a stained glass window. Perhaps it will maintain its integrity, in which case I will guide it as a glass-bottomed boat down the Homosassa, to where the mermaid babes be.

Match Collector

I. Roberto Carlos Braga and Clarice Lispector
Subi no pé de manga pra pegar jabuticaba.

Regardless of what Brazilians say, 
A lime is not a lemon, you know.
The lemon tree will never grow
Where limes are gathered every day. 

Bananas grow along the coast,
Hugging the sea and hearing its roar
Far from the Amazon’s darker shore,
Where devils take the hindmost.

The fruit of paradise the blest
Has changed over the years of strife.
The trees are still the Tree of Life
And Tree of Ontic Eternal Unrest.

The peach was rare in Rio once.
They grow down south, in colder lands,
Are sent by strange and colder hands
To Fluminensian waterfronts.

The blueberry was seldom sold,
Not to be found at outdoor stalls.
But modern markets in modern malls
Bring fruit in trucks that keep them cold.

There’s hope to grow some worthy grape
To storm the world of global wine
With juice as good as the argentine.
Alas! the land’s in rotten shape.

I wanted bright jabuticabas,
So climbed on up the mango tree.
The grapes were putrid as could be,
I came back down with no guavas.

My books all end, like roads, in Rome.
Strawberry time's a memory.
One final deed is left to me,
A cigarette, then head for home.


II. Notes from Underground
When we reached the place, I dug a pit and poured into it libations for all the dead—first with honey and milk, then with sweet wine, and thirdly with water.

Odysseus sweeps along thalassis!
His ships are leaves upon the stream
Of hazard fate, sailing a dream.
The lotophagi move like molasses.

A land of streams, like downward smoke
They saw a gleaming river flow,
Slow-dropping veils of lawn did go
And wavering lights and shadows broke.

Oh Lotus Eaters save us all!
This flower’s fatal frivolity
Makes worlds of endless odyssey,
Keeps us from wives and walls banal.

Fruitless flowers on beeless isle!
How will they make their children bright?
What modal verb in impotence might?
I think we may be here a while.

The tulip’s fatal philosophy
Is full in force by summer’s sun.
He’s underground by then, he’s done.
He misses the antistrophe.

I think it’s better to be bamboo,
Perhaps a fern, some plant that’s bold,
Some shoot refusing to be controlled,
Some shoot that shoots, breaks through to new.

You’re underground too long, old man.
It’s time to force a spring, to leap
Like deer, to bravely cast off sleep
And try at least to do what you can.

Your sadness long I've watched for rhyme,
Your reason sought on rainbowed flood.
I am your blood, old man, your blood.
I am your silence and your time.