Artist: Ney Matogrosso
Album: Olhos De Farol
Lyrics: Poema
Eu hoje tive um pesadelo e levantei atento, a tempo
Eu acordei com medo e procurei no escuro
Alguem com seu carinho e lembrei de um tempo
Porque o passado me traz uma lembranca
Do tempo que eu era crianca
E o medo era motivo de choro
Desculpa para um abraco ou consolo
Hoje eu acordei com medo, mas nao chorei
Nem reclamei abrigo
Do escuro eu via um infinito sem presente
Passado ou futuro
Senti um abraco forte, ja nao era medo
Era uma coisa sua que ficou em mim (que nao tem fim)
De repente a gente ve que perdeu
Ou esta perdendo alguma coisa
Morna e ingenua
Que vai ficando no caminho
Que e escuro e frio, mas tambem bonito
Porque e iluminado
pela beleza do que aconteceu
Ha minutos atras.
~~~
Nighttimes Silence after the Daytimes Violence
i
Today I woke with fear but did not cry. Tonight I have a candle, a poem, some rags, and by morning, my illuminated tears and my illuminated joy:
By the light of a candle at my windowsill, I make milk with honey and watch the gold spill into the milky cup. Today's blood is resting in my other eye. They are the ugly marks of my neighbour's blood on my window.
My hands still shaking, I roll a cigarette, just to see a steady hand retuning. I lay it on the kitchen table, deciding to first play some music. My plan is to later, slice a piece of peace and quiet from this day and night - a trail of blood along the balcony - and type.
"Please, hit the windows of this empty home with song!". He sings Portuguese: 'Today I woke with fear but did not cry. I saw an infinity and felt a strong 'embrace'...'. As he sings his 'Poema', I take rags and wash my friend's blood from his face at my window. In the quiet black and the white and gold of candled night, I light the memory of him, but they are another man's memories I see now in his splattered blood on the glass. His wife loves him differently - once again her 'brave man'. He is in the blood, his pride stirred by another mans darkness, the Darkness that had taken our joy away.
Later, he had told them he had done it to 'protect' them all. But I had watched the Darkness smash a glass brick ashtray into his skull, and a bat had crushed his neck and arm. My friend had stepped out of his cave to save the whole landing, and then, straight after, leaning in like a gentleman, he had offered with his good arm, to light my cigarette.
I see it all again - a quickening: I pick up the cigarette and he extends me a light: a straight flint stone tool. In the friction of circular parts, in a triangle's fraction, fire is born. A quickening: oil and wick, a candle lit and my cigarette sparkles and splits. Wisps exhaled dance like ghosts in smoke rings and gentle white spirits leave smiling upright, straight through the shuttered casement. They could flutter the clouds dizzy and float where stories write themselves, and this is where I write mine, as the blood drips from your face.
I am easily silent; so easily alone, and in the awakening, uneasily illuminated by the kindest of gestures. In the blood on the window I saw my own blessed cursed life again, and it still can make me sad when the blood of others moves in the glass. Night sound is silent on a knife's edge with sirens and news reports, and the women and children I love are no longer singing on the balcony; instead we wait for the news of gunshots. It's anxiety for dinner, behind closed doors.
ii
In the morning, God is playing Reggae in the park next door and each brick, wooden board and bone is shaking with the rumble of Jah, M.C. drum and bass. The clean window shivers when a smiling face knocks, dressed in summer and carrying the most beautiful sunflowers.
I open the door to his wife and, aglow with pride for her heralded House and Man, she thanks her neighbour for everything. He is broken in places but as proud as punch. She says, "I think he's come home - I can see it all about him. Thank you - London Archway and this 'Hallway of Dreams' is ours again~!". We laugh like old times, dance on the landing, mouthing the words of God in the park, the brickwork bouncing his dried blood into flaking dust particles for the sunlight. No one should take our peace. We had all put our energies towards preventing him from taking what is not his, but it had come to this. The flowers lay on the kitchen table and reflect in the clean glass while Jah holds them and a world outside, in the hum of community drumming.
We look over the balcony and the neighbourhood is alive with beautiful Nigerian women serving up patties, skinny Turkish girls and their shiny black hair, London's Caribbean and all London's island children spinning and dipping in the hopping heart of the bass. The liquid sun paints their small bones golden, and all shades of London's tanned leap in a bright bleached forest. This is my patchwork town. Their arms are in the air to praise the Summer, each other, and to the joys of moving together through the colours of the day.
Someone calls - "Come down little Princess, come dance with us! And hurry -be quick- Lady Devine has put aside a Patti for you and she said it is filled with the wisest voices of birds!" She smiles and waves - it is Tasla from the Baptist church on the corner.
"Baby - hurry, it's a quickening Girl - what's gwanin? You sleepin' through our blessed noisy dance? Come little one - I saw you in my dreams and you have no need to be sad Girl - come - leave the darkness on your balcony and dance along with us on this Ger-lorious Day!"
I grin at Tasla and wave from the landing, dash indoors to pick up my keys, and close the door. Fluttering white pages of last night's scenes leave like last nights smoky ghosts wisping down the balcony to dissolve in the bleaching sun. We smile. The melody changes to soften as flutes and Samba's footsteps take us out to play.
