Raised from the Ground

up with an ode or a sonnet, he’ll produce a quatrain, which is much more to the common taste. The sun hasn’t reached the crazy temperatures it does in July and August, there is even a cool breeze, and wherever you look, from this high vantage point, which would once have served as a lookout post, everything is green fields, no spectacle can more easily soften souls, only someone very hard of heart would not feel a tremor of joy. Over there, the thick growth of bushes resembles a garden lacking both irrigation and a gardener, these are plants that have had to learn by themselves how best to adapt to nature, to the brute stone that resists their roots, and perhaps for that very reason, because of the stubborn energy expended in these places that men avoid, here where the struggle is between vegetable and mineral, the scents are so penetrating, and when the sun blazes down upon the hillside, all the perfumes open and might lull us to sleep forever, we might perhaps die with our face to the earth, while the ants, raising their heads like dogs, advance, protected by gas masks, for this is their home as well.

These are easy poems to write. The odd thing is that there are no men to be seen. The fields grow green and lush, the undergrowth is steeped in peace and perfume, but a second look tells us that the wheat has lost its first tender freshness, there are tiny dabs of yellow in that vast space, barely noticeable, and the men, where are the men in this happy landscape, perhaps they are not, in fact, the serfs of this glebe, tethered to a stake like goats so that they can eat only what is within reach. There are long periods of idleness while the wheat grows, man has sown the seed in the earth, and if the year is favorable, then lie down and sleep, and call me when it’s harvest time. It’s hard to understand that this May of flowers is actually a sullen month, we don’t mean the weather, which is lovely and seems set fair, but these faces and eyes, this mouth, this frown, There’s no work, they say, and if nature sings, good luck to her, we’re not in the mood for singing.

Let’s go for a walk in the country, up into the hills, on the way the sun glints on this one stone, and we, who are suckers for happiness, say, It’s gold, as if all that glittered were gold. We see no men working and immediately declare, What an easy life, the wheat is growing and the workers are resting. However, the truth is rather different. The winter passes, as we have described, in grand banquets and feasts of thistles, dockweed and watercress, with a little fried onion, a few grains of rice and a crust of bread, taking the food from our own mouths so that our children don’t go hungry, we shouldn’t really need to repeat this, you’ll think we’re boasting about the sacrifices we make, the very idea, it was the same for our parents and for their parents, and for the parents of those parents, in the days of Senhor Lamberto and before, as far back as anyone can remember, the winter passed, and while some died of starvation, there are plenty of other ways of describing the cause of death, names that are far less offensive to modesty and decency. It’s mid-January, men are needed to prune the trees, whether for Dagoberto or Norberto, it doesn’t matter, we start to earn a little money, but there’s not enough work for everyone, Make a choice, don’t get into arguments, and then, once the trees have been pruned, there’s the wood on the ground, and the charcoal burners arrive to buy from here and there, and then it’s time for them to perform their fiery art, and while we savor the vocabulary of charcoal-burning, staking, earthing up, plugging and firing, the words are doing what they say, it’s nothing to do with us, we just know the words, but we didn’t know them before, we had to learn them fast, out of necessity, and if everything’s ready, let’s bag the charcoal up and carry it away, and that’s that until next year, my name’s Peres, I own twenty-five charcoal kilns in the Lisbon area, as well as several others in the environs, and you can tell your mistress that my charcoal is good stuff, oak, so it burns nice and slow, which is why, of course, it’s more expensive. We’re burning up in this dryness, this dust, this smoke, there’s water to drink over there, I put the jug to my lips, lean back my head, the water gurgles down, a shame it’s not cooler, it dribbles from the corners of my mouth and traces rivers of pale skin among the banks of coal dust. We must all have experienced such things and others, because life, despite being short, has room for these and many more, but there are some who lived but briefly, and their whole lives were consumed in this one task.

The charcoal burners and sellers have gone, and now it’s May, the month of flowers, may those who write verses try eating them. There are sheep to be sheared, who knows how to do that, I do, I do, cry a few, and the others return to the good life, so called, to weeks of the bad life, going in and out of their houses, until the wheatfields are ready to be harvested, earlier here, later there, yes, we need you now or we might need you later, the goat is tethered to the stake and has no more to eat. It hasn’t for some time. So what’s the daily rate, ask the workers in the labor market, and the overseers stroll along the unarmed battalions, the sickle has been left at home and we don’t