manaus once again
by Astrid Cabral
Store after store selling glasses along the streets.
I search in vain for glasses good against space and time.
Lenses to nullify the absolute sovereignty of distances
and bring to me clear images of the past.
My eyes struggle to disinter Manaus,
that vast roofless market, that open-air garage.
Here and there icebergs of neoclassical profile:
the theater’s cupola, the high facade of a palace,
but vertical slabs quickly block the view
and a raw explosion of color comes to mask
the facades of somber buildings dressed in aging grayish-green.
I look for a discreet shop, the reserve of the lost
province, where one entered through high and narrow doors
asking for merchandise from people whom one knew.
All without the slightest gaudiness, no blatant posters,
no loudspeakers and their strident bellowing.
I look for a quiet hidden face from long before this chaos,
Carnival follies of just three fleeting days,
the pleasant corner where there reigned a silence
broken only by the sound of bells and streetcars on their tracks.
None of the savage roar of endless traffic
nor of the anonymous crowd parading by without a face.
Now I can barely take a step, the sidewalks blocked by cars
and street stalls bursting with electronic implements.
I stop short: startled by the tough tenacity
of green: at last I see licania, ficus, mango and papaya trees.
They all proclaim the miracle, fruit of fertile rains.
For years they’ve grown, but stunted in the shadow of
those stationary herds of exotic elephants.
I look in vain for channels flowing under bridges
carrying along riverbanks, branches, trunks, leaves.
No longer canoes, rolling wakes, waterlogged calabash,
nor floating shacks, houses on stilts, shoots of swamp grass.
Just malodorous debris, gangrenous pools of mud,
shacks made of scraps, zinc sheeting, residue, miseria.
Of the submerged, almost extinct, humiliated waters,
only a covering of underbrush reveals the hidden moisture.
To see the city once again, I shut my eyes.
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