Saudade, by Summer Edward

Saudade (Longing), by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior (Brazil), 1899.

Saudade

I.     No one will remember
this death, this long
carnage of innocence.    

The heart’s pail
of laughter sinking.

The body’s well
or grief’s deep

gallon; no one is
documenting this.

The inches of a loss,
who counts them?

The rule, the meter
of catastrophe.

What is the measure of a loss?    


II.    Saudade, the eighteenth year,
with what dark cotillions

you arrived waltzing
on my heart’s opening sod.

I was hoping for
a constant garden.

How could I dream
of my sudden decline
wrapped in the wings of a dove?


III.    A dove or a
crumpled letter?

Why would an angel write to a girl?
Why would Almeida’s girl

cover her mouth?
What thought is so unspeakable?

Why would an angel write
to a girl trapped in a black shawl?


IV.    Or was I too careless with time?
Did I offend the sanctity of clocks?

Arrange my feet in a curse?
Were my steps so ever doomed?

The first close of regret
is a measure.

Such is the dance of Saudade!
        

V.    No one will remember this death,
it will lodge in the stone

sea of life, the fretting sea
of trouble and love.

The years will forget
this year like crimes.

But will I always bear
the mark of a stun?

The stoic sigh,
the earthless lung?

This gloom that shuttered
my longing
and shall I say I was touched?


VI.    When I was lost and crying,
the earth troubled me
more than I ever troubled it;
I was erased by so much

sighing, yet
I think I will live
to remember this death
longer than forgetfulness.

Summer Edward

Summer Edward was born in Trinidad and Tobago. Her writing has been anthologized in Whaleheart: Journey into the Night with Maya Christina Gonzalez and 23 Courageous ArtistAuthors and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, edited by Karen Lord, and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Missing Slate, Horn Book Magazine, Duende, Bim: Arts for the 21st Century, Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society, sx salon, tongues of the ocean, The Columbia Review, The Caribbean Writer, Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora and others. She was shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Prize, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and was selected for the NGC Bocas Lit Fest’s New Talent Showcase, spotlighting the best emerging Caribbean writers. She divides her time between Trinidad and Philadelphia, USA.

www.summeredward.com