Roots and Wings: a series that gathers voices from Portugal and introduces them to English language readers

Dark Chant by José Régio

“Come this way,” they tell me,
their eyes gentle,
arms open,
certain it would be good for me
to listen
when they say:
come this way.

I look at them
with tired eyes—
(there is irony in my gaze,
and long exhaustion)
I cross my arms,
and I never go that way.

This is my glory:
to make myself unhuman.
To follow no one.
I live with the same reluctance
with which I tore myself
from my mother’s womb.

No.
I will not go that way.
I go only where
my own footsteps lead.

If none of you can answer
what I am trying to know,
why do you keep repeating:
come this way?

I would rather slip through muddy alleys,
spin loose in the winds,
drag my feet in blood-soaked rags,
than walk your clean road.

If I came into this world,
it was only
to deflower untouched forests,
to leave the print of my own feet
in unexplored sand.
Everything else I do
is worth nothing.

So how could it be you
who give me momentum,
tools, courage
to break my own barriers?

In your veins runs
the old blood of your grandfathers.
You love what is easy.
I love the Far-Off and the Mirage.
I love abysses, torrents, deserts.

Go.
You have roads.
You have gardens.
You have borders and roofs.
You have rules and treaties
and philosophers and wise men.

I have my Madness.

I raise it like a torch
burning in the dark night,
and I taste foam and blood
and chanting on my lips.

God and the Devil guide me—
no one else.
Everyone had a father,
everyone had a mother.
But I, who never begin
and never end,
was born of the love
between God and the Devil.

Ah—let no one offer me pious intentions.
Let no one demand definitions.
Let no one tell me:
come this way.

My life is a storm unchained.
A wave that has risen.
An extra atom
suddenly alive.

I don’t know where I’m going.
I don’t know where I’ll end.
I only know this—

I am not going that way.

Translated by Diniz Borges