When We Try to Conquer Land or Sea --Words from Fernando Pessoa

 

 Years ago in the Baixa district of Lisbon, I tasted the best Ginjinha drink I ever had. It was at the A Ginjinha bar, a tiny place where one can only stand to enjoy the drinks. I had told a friend that when I was a kid my mother used to make sour cherry liqueur by placing a big jar filled with grain alcohol, sugar and sour cherries at the window under the Mediterranean sun. It took many months to get it ready, but when my mother was busy in the kitchen I would “steal a taste” of the brewing sweet drink…

“I will take you to your childhood,” she said, “in Portugal we use Morello cherries to make Ginjinha. You have to have it com fruta, with a few cherries in the cup.”

And I recall that on the wall of the bar was a line from Fernando Pessoa:

Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
São lágrimas de Portugal!

which my friend translated as

Oh salty sea, how much of your salt
Are the tears of Portugal!

 

… It is Saturday today and my day for reading poetry. My heart is shadowed by the war in Eastern Europe from where I have met many souls dear to me. I wrote about my feelings here https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-sword-and-sickle-william-blake.html in the way I know – through poetry and hope.

And, this morning when I recalled that bar in Lisbon, I looked for Pessoa’s poem.

Oh salty sea, how much of your salt
Are the tears of Portugal!
Because we crossed you, how many mothers cried,
How many children prayed in vain!
How many brides never married
So that you would be ours, oh sea!

Was it worth it? All is worth it
if the soul is not small.

 

I stopped reading. Was it worth it to cross the sea and try to conquer it? Was it worth the tears, the pain, and the brides who never married because their man got lost to the sea?

Para que fosses nosso, ó mar! (So that you would be ours, oh sea !)

The sea never belonged to those who crossed it; it just made mothers cried salty tears.

… It is Saturday and my day to read poetry. But today I did more than reading – I let Pessoa sooth my shadowed heart as Ginjinha once did in Lisbon.

About the photo: I took this photo the day we were walking around the Baixa district. I think it is called “The wall of tolerance”. I was pleased that I had noted the year on the photo – it was in 2008.

April 2, 2022

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2022