Lisboa Antigua e Moderna

A free verse poem

I am the singer of Fado.
I am marginalized.
I live on the outskirts of despair.
Take the little trolley car
Up Lisbon's steep streets
Past hope, beyond redemption,
Into the suburbs of Poverty,
Where homeless children sleep in doorways
And old men lie dying on benches.

I am the singer of Fado.
I pick the pockets of the dead
And rob the graves of those who died
Penniless in prisons and asylums.
My people live here
Working, crying and singing.
They do not know what fascists looked like
All the fascists are dead, but Fascism lives.

I am the singer of Fado.
My trinity are not the Church, the State, and the Army
Nor are they Wine, Women, and Song.
The triumvirate of arrest, imprisonment and torture
Preside in the court of public disapproval
Where Gypsies and thieves play guitars,
Squeezed between Spanish swords
And the terrors of the sea.