Cântico negro / Black song by José Régio

“Come this way” — some say with sweet eyes,
Opening their arms, and sure
That it could be good that I would listen to them
When they say: “Come this way”!
I look at them with unattached eyes,
(In my eyes there is irony and tiredness)
And I cross my arms,
And I never go that way…
This is my glory:
To create inhumanity!
Never to accompany anybody.
—For I live with the same unwillingness
I teared my mother’s womb with.
No, I won’t go that way! I only go through where
My own steps take me…
If what I search to know none of you can answer,
Why do you repeat: “Come this way”?
I prefer to slide on muddy corners,
To whirl at the wind,
Like rags, to drag my bleeding feet,
Than to go that way…
If I came to the world, was
Only to deflower virgin rain-forests,
And to draw my own feet on the unexplored sand!
All the rest I do is worth nothing.
How come you are the ones
Who will give me axes, tools and courage,
For I to throw down my obstacles?…
It runs, in your veins, the old blood of the grand-parents,
And you love what is easy!
I love the Far and the Mirage,
I love the abysses, the torrents, the deserts…
Go! you have roads,
You have gardens, you have flower-beds,
You have homelands, you have roofs,
And you have rules, and treatises, and philosophers, and wisemen.
I have my Madness!
I hold it high, like a torch, burning in the dark night,
And I feel foam, and blood, and chants on the lips…
God and the Devil are the ones who guide me, nobody else.
All of you had a father, all of you had a mother;
But I, who never start or end,
I was born from the love between God and the Devil.
Hah! That nobody gives me pious intentions!
That nobody asks me for definitions!
That nobody tells me: “Come this way”!
My life is a storm-wind that got unlocked.
It is a wave that has risen.
It is an extra atom that got animated…
I don’t know where I’m going through,
I don’t know where I’m going,
—I know I’m not going that way.

Cântico negro / Black song by José Régio