Tag: portuguese poems

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The Gypsies’s Fire

Photo by Polina Koroleva

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THE GYPSIES’S FIRE

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to Catarina

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in the south of Lanzarote, near Playa Blanca,
in a place they call Los Charcones,
I saw the closest thing on earth
to the moon

the landscape is covered in pyroclasts, in hardened ash,
in dust.
nothing survives here, save the creeping euphorbia
and one or another species of lizard

but at night this desert fills with bonfires,
with small scattered flames
between walls and tents

they say it’s the gypsies’ fire,
no one knows where they come from or where they go.
and I say blessed be they, for they exist

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Poem by João Ricardo Lopes from the book Em Nome da Luz (2022 | Translated by Marcus Margrave (2026)

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Praise

Photo by Kent Pilcher

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PRAISE

I find my peace descending through the notebook
towards a blank page

besieged by noise and by emptiness, my words
hold themselves in reserve for You, for the radiance of morning,
for the voice that leads me along the tortuous thread
of time

in my fingers I feel the rigor of water, the labor
of soap, Your joy

like grasses greening in the earth, the words flow:
I know men will come with their many blades,
they will come with the fire of their loveless hearts
and that small infinite light may not endure
beyond half a season

but it does not matter.
there was in my wrists the tremor, the miracle
repeated from the days of the beginning
and I know that every poem is born for You, all the green
of humble, useless things
and I know that I am fortunate, because You taught me so

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Poem by João Ricardo Lopes | Translated by Marcus Margrave (2026)

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