OBITUARY

The poet Nuno Dempster has died. That was how the news arrived, delivered by Companhia das Ilhas. Each time a poet dies, there ought to be silence. Not the kind of silence measured by time, but a restless silence—made of all the words still waiting to be lived.

A poet has died. Nuno Dempster was born on the island where I was born and died in the city where I now live my days. I learned it late. Too late for everything—for knowing we were in the same place, and for knowing that in that place I heard nothing about his departure. It was already Sunday when I found out. A Sunday of janeiras, of villages dressed in tradition out in the streets, of last—and first—shots of ginjinha, of what remains of philharmonic bands, of emptied market shelves, and a cutting cold bidding farewell to the leftovers of the feast.

A poet has died. I heard no bells in São Miguel, and I heard no bells in Viseu. Perhaps nothing is heard once we have heard too much. I caught myself searching the obituaries for some notice. Nothing. One leaves as one came—in nothing.

The first time I went to Fafe, I was startled—startled isn’t quite the word—by the number of papers hanging from the columns of the arcades at the entrance to a restaurant. All the dead on display. The chosen photograph—sometimes a black-and-white youth, carefully arranged for a day of celebration; sometimes frail, close to the present. None is a good photograph for the end. The family’s phrases, the funeral home’s phrases, the informational phrases: day, hour, place of the final goodbye. Or the seventh-day mass. Or… a cross. Later I found the same kind of obituary posted in many parts of the country. What once felt uncomfortable now strikes me as a living sense of community.

There was a time when, whenever someone arrived for vacation in Lajes, the news appeared in the newspaper. The man, his wife and children, the family they belonged to—announced as useful information. As if the arrival of those who belong, though they live far away, were useful to the place. To some. To others. I once thought it too much exposure—announcing an arrival like a procession meant to be seen. It isn’t that at all, I know now. Names are announced—whether of arrivals or departures—only when a name still reaches someone. When a name arrives for someone. Perhaps that is what remains of each place’s identity: individuality before numbers, statistics, results, censuses, the global.

But when a poet dies, what name do we announce?

A verse should be the opening of a newspaper. Or not.

Certainly not. Let the verses and the breaths remain among themselves, sighing at the absence, holding up this side of things. A verse is not a thing with a dateline. A verse is not a gravestone, but perhaps the place where a stretch of eternity begins.

Some believe obituaries are relics of another time—as if death were a thing of the past. If it is the only future we all share, why don’t we cultivate communities more carefully in our everyday places?

Social media speaks endlessly of communities and speaks of deaths, but it does not speak of the words that have lost their author. I’m afraid of dying on a social network—of having my face shared, perhaps through a photograph I posted while alive. I have no verses to hide me from departure.

When the janeiras are sung again, I will remember that an Azorean died within a community carrying its traditions in its arms, wrapped in coats against the cold. I think poets are magicians—and those who have eyes are kings.