Happy Birthday, Chico César!
Source: Relicário, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
For Chico César’s 59th birthday today, I offer a translation of his intensely poetic song “Estado de Poesia” (“State of Poetry”) from his 2015 album of the same name.
“State of Poetry”
To live in a state of poetry
I would bury myself in your wilderness
To leave the life that I had been living
Of wandering before knowing you
Of free errors I made because I wanted to
For not knowing that one day or another
I would be enchanted by your whole being
To mix midnight, midday
And finally to know that I would sing your songs
That I wanted for so long, the song of well wishes
It’s beautiful, you see love without anesthesia
It hurts so good, burns so sweet
Burns, calms, kills, creates
A time comes when a person who falls in love
Ends up crying over what just yesterday made them laugh
A time comes when you laugh from the inside out
You don’t stay or leave, it’s the state of poetry