Antonio de Castro Alves

14 March 1847 – 6 July 1871 / Curralinho

Goodbye

GOODBYE - O ungrateful child!
You said to me - goodbye -?
Madness! better it would be
To separate the land from the skies.

- Goodbye - somber word!
Of a frozen and cold soul
You are the last flower.

- Goodbye! - misery! lie
Of a breast that does not sigh,
Of a heart without love.

O Lord! The wasteland bird
dies without a mate.
The lightning that burns the cedar
Burnt the parasite.

The star flirts with the dew:
- One is the star of the twig,
- The other is the dew of the amplitude.

But, at the light of the rising sun,
The star - in the west dies!
The dew - dies in the soil!

Never the fogs of the valley
Learnt how to say - goodbye -
If together they ascend from the ground,
Together they are lost in skies.

The wave dies on the shore…
But another wave comes soon
To die of the same pain…

- Goodbye - somber word!
Do not say - goodbye -, Maria!
Or do not speak to me of love!
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