THE PLUNDER STOLEN FROM TIME

Vejo o outono caindo.
(Paulo Mendes Campos)

I was tired and sleeping on my lazy bed,
imagining that all the work was finished.
As I woke up in the morning I found
my garden swarming with flowers....
(Rabinadrath Tagore, apud Ivo Storniolo)



when a sly spring
sneaking from a window slit
come to load me with unbidden flowers,
and I, taking pains to carry them,
mistaking my new burden
for the lot of former nuisances,

stop and spy inside of me
only to notice that melancholy,
who had been my prisoner,
my captive broke off the
intricate maze of my ways
and flew away for never to be traced

then I will dare be proud of having loved this world
which never gave me anything I could show around,
I will feel happy for having squandered my days
celebrating it with the ragged lyre of my words,
and my heart will roll as the drum-works
of my triumph naked of prizes

I will finally be ripe
for picking up the fruits that grew
from the blossom of a bleak season,
those whose seeds I was told
wouldn’t unfold: that is the plunder I stole,
my crop out of time

but I will not keep anything for me,
I, who did not earn or deserve them,
but shall give them all to the ones
who wasted those of their own,
and by so doing, had them returned
to the hunger of the earth