It is said they come from Central Europe. I see them coming
from the direction of Grijó, in a weary caravan.

The she-dog trots beneath the only wagon,
availing herself of the jiggling, faint shade.
In the driver's seat, with his swarthy hand
slackly holding the reins, a man daydreams,
trusting the slow mule to lead the way.
Other men on foot, along with the young women,
lighten with laughter the long hard trek.
Then come their chattels, loaded on donkeys
whose precarious trotting also bears
a few oldsters tired of everything. Nursing infants
suck with drowsy stubbornness at teats
stretched and shaking, but round and white.
The children run along in playful
little herds, making brief and furtive sallies
into the vegetable plots on either side.

They are all dark-skinned and have a sing-song speech.
They all look at me with soft brown eyes.
It is said they come
from Central Europe, from a landless race,
and here, amid insults, they seek
to carry out their struggle, their exile
and their primitive vocation.
It is said they unearth animals deceased
from foul diseases and sink
into them their millenary hunger.
It is said their women are intimate
with the stars and for a few dollars
will read colorful futures in your hands.
It is said they rob gardens and poach chickens,
and the villagers, in secret alarm,
banish them with iron hand and ruthless voice
from the environs of their peaceable land.
It is said they fool unwary farmers
in their never transparent dealings to sell animals,
passing off as a thoroughbred
the blindest and most broken-down nag.
It is said that in the towns, after taking down their fairs
and getting drunk, they trade vicious swipes
with their sturdy, handsome canes from which they die.
It is said they have strange passionate dramas.
It is said they have no god and get married
by tossing joyful hats into the air.

All this and more is said about gypsies. I don't know.
I see them coming from the direction of Grijó
and there they all are, right in front of me,
and they look to me like people, just people.

Translation: 2008, Richard Zenith