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?