Mario Quintanahe died on May 5, 1994. Born in Alegrete, in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, on July 30, 1906, Mario is certainly one of the best and bigger poets of Brazilian literature.
His poetry is marked by a simplicity and lyricism unmistakable, since it was from everyday life that Mario extracted his raw material. His work comprises more than twenty books, being Rua dos Cataventos the first, published when the poet was already thirty-four. Among his various titles, many were dedicated to children's literature, a universe where Mario moved with the typical delicacy and propriety of those who appreciate the simple things in life.
O Brazil School selected five definitive poems by the poet for you to enjoy and be enchanted by the contagious lyricism of his verses. Good reading!
song of the usual day
So good to live day to day...
Life like this, never tires...
live only for moments
Like these clouds in the sky...
And just win, all your life,
Inexperience... hope...
And the crazy wind rose
Attached to the crown of the hat.
Never give a river a name:
It's always another river to pass.
Nothing ever goes on,
Everything will start over!
and without any memory
Of the other lost times,
I throw the dream rose
In your distracted hands...
Rua dos Cataventos
The first time they murdered me,
I lost a way of smiling I had.
Then, every time they killed me,
They took something from me.
Today, of my corpses I am
The most naked, the one that has nothing left.
A yellowish candle stub burns,
As the only good that was left to me.
Come! Crows, jackals, highwaymen!
Because from that greedy hand hooks
They will not rip the holy light!
Birds of the night! Horror wings! Fly!
May the flickering light and sad as a woe,
A dead man's light never goes out!
In 1990, after three years of restoration of the former Majestic Hotel, the Casa de Cultura Mario Quinana was inaugurated in Porto Alegre
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
Hope
Right up there on the twelfth floor of the Year
Lives a madwoman called Hope
And she thinks when all the sirens
all horns
All reco-recoes play
throw yourself
And — oh delicious flight!
She will be found miraculously unharmed on the sidewalk,
Again child...
And around her the people will ask:
"What's your name, little girl with green eyes?"
and she will tell you
(You have to tell them all over again!)
She will tell you very slowly so that you don't forget:
— My name is ES-PE-RAN-ÇA…
I wrote a sad poem
I wrote a sad poem
And beautiful, just from its sadness.
Doesn't this sadness come from you
But from the changes of Time,
Which now gives us hope
Now it gives us uncertainty...
It doesn't even matter, to old Time,
May you be faithful or unfaithful...
I stand by the stream,
Looking at the hours so short...
And the letters you write me
I make paper boats!
Presence
It is necessary that nostalgia draw your perfect lines,
your exact profile and that, just slightly, the wind
of the hours put a shiver in your hair...
Your absence needs to climb
subtly, in the air, the bruised clover,
the long-held rosemary leaves
no one knows by whom in some old piece of furniture…
But it also needs to be like opening a window
and breathe yourself, blue and luminous, in the air.
It takes longing for me to feel
how I feel – in myself – the mysterious presence of life…
But when you show up, you're so different and multiple and unforeseen
that you never look like your portrait...
And I have to close my eyes to see you.
*The image that illustrates the article is the cover of the book. Mario Quintana – Poet, hiker and dreamer, from the collection Gaucho Authors, of State Book Institute, Rio Grande do Sul.
**Mario Quintana Culture House image credits: Ricardo André Frantz.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
