Grandma Mariana by Alda do Espirito Santo

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Grandma Mariana, washerwoman

for the whites in the Fazenda

One day she came from distant lands

with her piece of cloth round waist

and stayed.

Grandma Mariana stayed

washing, washing away, on the plantation

smoking her gourd pipe

outside the slave-quarters’ door

remembering the journey from her sisal fields

on a sinister day

to the distant island

where the hard labour

erased the memory

of the bulls, the deaths,

away in the distant Cubal.

Grandma Mariana came

and sat outside the slave-quarters’ door

and smoked her gourd pipe

washing, washing,

a wall of silence.

The years drained away

in the hot land.

– ‘Grandma Mariana, Grandma Mariana

it is time to leave.

Go back to your vast lands

of endless plantations.’

– ‘Where’s the people’s land?

Old woman comes, never returns…

I came from afar,

years and years spent in this yard…

Mad old woman does not have land anymore

I will stay here, silly boy.’

Grandma Mariana, smoking her gourd pipe

at the doorstep of your dark alley,

old little Grandma tell us

your inglorious story.

Live, vegetate

in the shade of the yard

you won’t tell your story.

Grandma Mariana, my little Grandma,

smoking her gourd pipe

on the doorstep of the slave-quarters

you won’t tell of your destiny…

Why did you cross the seas, old little grandma,

and remain here, all by yourself

smoking your gourd pipe?