I Say (Myself to You)

A poem by Adelaide Freitas, translated to English by Diniz Borges

I declare myself here, a daughter of the earth,
divided across worlds—
New York City, Coimbra, São Miguel Island—
yet rooted still in the Nordeste,
in the lucid breadth of an infinite land.

I hear violins in the wind
when immemorial furrows
take on the volume of the sea
and the ineffable whispers the childhood of every step…

In the absence of a house, without the murmur of fathers or mothers,
I build my dwelling in the backyard.

I love to weed, to dig, to sow—
to feel, against the skin, the rounded and silent breeze,
the hissing scent of the earth,
the tender commotion of light and color,
the warm brushing of the corn leaf.

From the child, I kept spontaneity,
the soft dew of the spirit,
the enchantment of a thousand flowers,
and all that has no name.

From the woman—
Listening. Waiting…
I cherish contradictions,
and between the poles I keep alive the flame of each:
the woman and the girl—
I want them steadfast,
of flesh and of blood,
of soul and of passion,
nothing in excess, nothing diminished.

They belong to my garden,
through which I wander
among white daisies,
enchanted fuchsias,
and the tender pink of peach blossoms.

Far away… the open sea.
On the horizon…
the trembling line of the hydrangea.

Note, as a trasnlator, friend and admirer: A voice does not begin—it gathers, like mist over the Atlantic, like memory rising from the furrows of a field long tilled by longing. “I Say (Myself to You)” emerges not as a declaration, but as a quiet unfolding of being, a lyrical cartography of a life stretched across distances yet anchored in an interior homeland. In this extraordinary poem by Adelaide Freitas, identity is neither singular nor still; it is tidal, shifting between New York, Coimbra, São Miguel, and the deep-rooted pulse of the Nordeste. As translator, I did not approach the poem as one approaches a text to be rendered, but as one enters a landscape—listening for its silences, tracing its textures, allowing its rhythms to breathe in another tongue without losing their original soul.

The poem is, at once, an act of self-naming and self-cultivation. The speaker does not merely inhabit the land—she tills it, tends it, becomes it. There is an ethics in this intimacy with the earth, a quiet resistance to fragmentation. To weed, to dig, to sow—these are not pastoral gestures; they are existential acts, affirmations of continuity in a world that so often disperses us. In translation, I felt the weight of this tactile language, the need to preserve its sensorial immediacy—the hissing scent of the earth, the soft insistence of light, the intimate brush of the corn leaf against the skin. English must be coaxed into this tenderness, persuaded to carry not only meaning, but breath.

And then, the delicate equilibrium she sustains between the child and the woman—a balance that is neither nostalgic nor fractured, but whole. From the child, she gathers wonder; from the woman, contradiction. And in that space between poles, she kindles a flame that does not consume, but illuminates. “Nothing in excess, nothing diminished”—a line that reads as both poetic measure and ethical credo. Her garden is not merely a place of beauty; it is a moral landscape, where difference is held in harmony, where identity is cultivated rather than imposed. And always, just beyond, the sea—vast, patient, eternal—reminds us that every rootedness carries within it the memory of departure.

To speak of Adelaide Freitas is to move from the page to the person, from the poem to the presence. I came to know her through my dear friend Vamberto Freitas, and from that first encounter, one sensed a rare coherence: her intellect and her kindness were not separate virtues, but one and the same current. Adelaide did not teach from above; she invited you into thought. She could offer a literary insight with the gentlest of gestures, never imposing, always illuminating. Hers was a humanism lived daily—a belief that social democracy was not an abstraction, but a collective responsibility to dignify every life.

She touched many lives, quietly, profoundly. In my own journey, her generosity became a moment of grace I have never forgotten. When my first book, América: O Outro Lado do Sonho, was published, her words reached me not as distant praise, but as a thoughtful, engaged response. She told me she would use my 1995 brief essay, included in the book As Quatro Repúblicas, in one of her classes on American Literature and Culture. In that simple act, she did what she always did—she connected, she elevated, she made space. It was not only encouragement; it was recognition, the kind that sustains a writer beyond the page.

Adelaide was, in every sense, a humanist—one who believed that literature must serve life, and that life, in turn, must be lived with dignity, empathy, and openness. Her kindness was never ornamental; it was foundational. Niveria and I remember her not only as a writer we admired, but as a friend whose presence carried warmth, clarity, and a quiet strength. Her absence is not silence—it is an echo that continues to resonate.

And so, in this month of poetry—April 2026, here in the United States—we return to her voice. Not as a relic, but as a living current. Through this translation, we listen again: to the earth she loved, to the garden she tended, to the sea that framed her horizon. The hydrangeas tremble in the distance, as they do in the Azores—fragile yet enduring, luminous against the wind. And there, between islands and continents, between language and memory, Adelaide Freitas remains—steadfast, generous, and beautifully, irrevocably human.

Diniz Borges