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Poetry, Flame of
Hope
By Thiago de Mello
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| Thiago
de Mello (right) and Daisaku Ikeda, 1997 [İSeikyo Shimbun] |
Like any artform, poetic
creation touches the soul through its beauty. But beyond the aesthetic
quality itself, poetry must have some ethical purpose--to serve life
better, with the power of the word that embraces the heart and the mind.
Poetry lays the truth bare. It plants hope. It lights the way forward in
the fight against all that scorns the dignity of our human condition. In
these dark days of humankind, we need poetry by our side.
Poetry helps me to preserve the Amazon forest, to promote cultural
exchange in Latin America and to defeat the fierce columns of social
injustice, causes to which I have devoted my life for years and years.
Poetry and humanity--they can't be separated.
I learn. And I learn from the poets that walk with me. They don't allow
the flame to die away. When first I read Songs from My Heart, by
Daisaku Ikeda, I learned perseverance. I also learn from the life of my
people; they are all the people of the Earth. People who read me, from
all the corners of the world, tell me that I am not singing in vain. I
don't know them. But I know that I share their hope. When I was in
prison, I read on the wall of my cell my own lines, written by someone
who had need for them: "It is dark, but I sing."
It must be said: the word is not the only source from which the light of
poetry comes. It comes from music, painting, dance, images, the silence
of sculpture; it is in pop songs, it is born from the symphonic concert
that engulfs reason to call forth human compassion.
Strident voices fall silent. Guns rust. Acts of generous rebellion
wither. But poetry endures, leaves the paper on which it was first
written, crosses darkness, penetrates the tyrant's walls and lands,
powerfully, in the painful chest. Tyranny kills poets, burns books. But
the power of poetry persists in the poet's song, warning that, in the
lines of the song, waiting is not knowing. He who knows, builds his
time, doesn't wait for it to happen.
Without poetry it is impossible to raise a harmonious human society.
Poetry lies at the foundation of peace, which humankind deserves.
--From the Amazon rain forest, November 2007
Article XII
It is decreed that nothing
will be obligatory or banned.
Everything will be permitted,
even playing with rhinoceroses
and walking in the afternoons
with an immense begonia in the lapel.
Only one thing is prohibited:
to love without love.
Article XIII
It is decreed that money
nevermore will be able to buy the sun
of future mornings.
Expelled from the great coffer of fear,
money will be transformed
into a fraternal sword
in order to defend the right to sing
and the feast of the day that dawned.
Final Article
It is hereby forbidden
to use the word Freedom,
which will be excised from the dictionaries
and the treacherous swamp of mouths.
From this moment on
freedom will be something alive and transparent,
like fire or a river,
or like a seed of wheat
and its dwelling will forever be
the heart of man.
Excerpt from Thiago de Mello's "Statutes of Man" (Os
Estatutos do Homem), written in 1964 as a reaction to the
military junta which had seized power in Brazil that same
year, issuing a series of repressive extra-constitutional
decrees. |
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Thiago
de Mello's poetry has been celebrated in his native Brazil and around
the world since the 1950s. During the years of military dictatorship he
was arrested and imprisoned on more than one occasion for his
resistance, while publication of his works was banned. Now in his 80s,
he remains active in efforts to preserve the Amazon rain forest and win
social justice for the people of Amazonia. This article has been
translated from Portuguese. |
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