Banner

Banner

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Saudades*

Like womb-comfort
mother’s milk fragrance
like love-orbits that crossed
and went their ways,
like a fragrance that caressed
in a train and an after-thought
abrush too late
the soft moment erased
by sand-paper hearts
the erased landscapes
of where we’ve been
and names at memory doors
that will not open
in our chosen incarcerations.

*Saudade: a Portuguese word that has no direct translation in. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.
LEAVE A COMMENT

5 comments :

  1. I 'saudade' for you Malinda.....

    ReplyDelete
  2. You may find the following interesting Malinda:


    We all experience within us what the Portuguese call ‘saudade’, an inexplicable longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul, and it is this feeling that lives in the realms of imagination and inspiration, and is the breeding ground for the sad song, for the love song. Saudade is the desire to be transported from darkness into light, to be touched by the hand of that which is not of this world … [T]he love song is never simply happy. It must first embrace the potential for pain. Those songs that speak of love, without having within their lines an ache or a sigh, are not love songs at all, but rather hate songs disguised as love songs, and are not to be trusted. These songs deny us our human-ness and our God-given right to be sad, and the airwaves are littered with them. The love song must resonate with the whispers of sorrow and the echoes of grief. The writer who refuses to explore the darker reaches of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, magic and joy of love, for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil, so within the fabric of the love song, within its melody, its lyric, one must sense an acknowledgement of its capacity for suffering.

    (Nick Cave, ‘The Secret Life of the Love Song’, in The Complete Lyrics 1978-2007 (London: Penguin, 2007), pp. 7-8.)

    This is Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave addressing an audience in 1999 on the subject of ‘the secret life of the love song’

    ReplyDelete
  3. beautiful explication! thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm so glad you like it... my pleasure!

      Delete
  4. like the soft image
    of a last smile
    that keep coming and coming
    invading life
    wrecking peace
    paralyzing heart.

    ReplyDelete