Blue and White: (In Praise of the Ministry of Education Building)

by Vinícius do Morais

1

Geometrical masses
In musical ascension
The depth and silence
Of imprisoned space.

Shell and seahorse.

Blossom born of the sea
You rose toward the magnet of sky
Until light restored equilibrium.

Shell and seahorse.

Venus Anadyomene
Winged and many-footed
With blue breasts
Giving milk to the evening
Eupalinos saw you
In the rounded mirror of the dewdrop
That the night let fall
Upon the lips of morning.

Shell and seahorse.

Eyelids closed against
The power of the sun
Shadows outstretched
In endless calm
Sublime colloquy
Of form and eternity.

Shell and seahorse.

II

From the green density
Of the innermost sea
Architecture was born.
From the lime of shells
The seed of algae
From the life of the octopus

Waiting on tentacles
From the mating of the polypus
That stratifies the caves of the sea
From the avid palate
Of the purple anemone
That mortars fishlife
From the salty cell
Of strange substance
That makes heavy the sea.

Shell and seahorse.

Shell and seahorse:
The agile undulance
That the daylight
Pervading, transforms
Into clefs of the sun
And love of the infinite
Lifts into verticals
Parallel antennae
Propitious to the eternal
Invasion of music.

Shell and seahorse.

III

Blue . . . Blue . . .
Blue and white
Blue and white
Blue and white
Blue and white
Blue and white
Blue and white
Blue and white
Blue and white
Blue and white

Shell ...
and seahorse.

Translated by Charles Edward Eaton