Day 16 - "Matar as Saudades, Or How To Write With a Broken Heart"

Good morning everyone,

I do intend to be genial and genuinely happy today in my post, though I feel I cannot post very much personal explanation for the piece. So much has occurred in my life lately - so much that is painful and difficult to mention - that I don't wish to recount it all here once again (which is why I haven't posted in a while, if any of you have been wondering why). Instead, I will let the poem speak for itself, as it is the first poem I have been able to pen since the event that has forever changed my life recently. At the very least, before I set it upon you, I will offer insight into the poem's title as well as the epigraph.

The poem's first title, "matar as saudades" is a common Portuguese phrase and means, simply, "to kill the saudades." Saudades is a beautiful Portuguese word for which there is no English translation, nor in any other language, and I will not rob you of the opportunity to discover what the word means on your own.

The epigraph is one written by a famous Portuguese 'saudadismo' and, in essence, it states:

"In reality
A man only finds himself in what he looses,
Because he embraces the space and the eternity."

I couldn't have found more perfect words. Enjoy the poem.


"Matar as Saudades, Or How To Write With a Broken Heart"


"Na verdade
Um homem só se encontra no que perde,
Porque ele abrange o espaço e a eternidade."
- TEIXEIRA DE PASCOAES

There is no instruction

No sling to hold it
No cloth to bear tears
No drink to quick-dissolve the ache

Only this, for sure: that we will sit with our pens
And think of things like,
“What strange little markings on these pages we’ve made.
And what do they mean, after all?
Fragments of ourselves -
Pieces of our hearts -
etched into tombstones of dead, bleached wood;
Epitaphs of bygone feelings, cut into manageable strips.
Distributed.
Given away to others, to take of as they will.

And this, we think,
this is what we ultimately wanted.
To have part of ourselves forever given to others,
And, to an extent, forever taken from us.”

The essence of true love
is sacrifice.

Like Adam, forced out of Eden, knew:
‘From now on, we must strive for our happiness.
It will not be given freely - never again.’

To dress our shrapnelled wounds and
Stumble through the crowds outside the Garden
We call forth lithic words of wisdom;
Capture the voices of friends within our ears;
Stitch the gifts of suffering upon our hearts;


And sit.


Just sit.

For hours, in the land of Nod.


Praying to understand the lot we cast.

Listening to the birds crying out, speaking in tongues
Through the stillness of the bleak morning air.
They sow not, reap not, nor gather in barns,
yet are fed.

The world still exists,
and will carry the birds and broken hearts along with it
Through each and every revolution.

But again, there is no instruction
This earth will turn
And you shall walk upon it, exiled
A wanderer
Without shoulder to lean on
Nor hand to clasp
Silently uttering horrible truths to your soul
You hoped you never would,
To which it shall respond, harmlessly enough,
“This pain, dear friend, is the price to be paid.”

It is then that one learns,
If we faint not at this,
That our pens still have ink to sacrifice
If our hearts can bear our hands to write
And carve new words into the dead, bleached wood
Of the generous tree, ‘neath whose shade we would slumber
In times we would die to see once more,
With a rough, mended smile, proclaiming therein, in vain:

“Set me once more upon your mantle, love;
I should be glad to be broken by your hands again.”


For Joe

- Joshua Clarke