“Livros” by Caetano Veloso
Source: Secretaría de Cultura Ciudad de México from México, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
“Livros” (“Books”) is the second track from Caetano’s 1998 album “Livro” (“Book”). Caetano won the Grammy for Best World Music Album for this album, as well as the Latin Grammy for Best MPB Album.
“Books”
You tripped on the stars clumsy
We barely had any books at home
And the city didn’t have a bookstore
But the books that came into our life
Are like the radiation of a black body
Pointing to the expansion of the Universe
Because the sentence, the concept, the plot, the verse
And, without a doubt, especially the verse
Is what can release worlds into the world
You tripped on the stars clumsy
Without knowing that the bliss and the misfortune
Of this road that goes from nothing to nothing
Are books and the moonlight against the culture
Books are transcendent objects
But we can love them with the tactile love
That we devote to cigarette packs
Tame then, cultivate them in aquariums
On shelves, cages, in bonfires
Or throw them out of windows
Maybe this will free us from throwing ourselves
Or what is much worse because we hate them
We could simply write one
Fill many pages with vain words
And the shelves with more confusion
You tripped on the stars clumsy
But for me you were the star among the stars
The spoken part in the middle of the song is in French and is from Stendhal’s The Red and the Black.