I sleep in a dream generated in the nightmares
and eat scraps of hope, milled in the impersonal
and mechanical time’s machine.
Scraps that feed me to be no more than a dry tree,
searching for pulling and unwinding roots
that capture me on the ground.
I prevailed over fate that once deceived me
and now walk and will spread my life around.
I wish distemper, hallucinate and extrapolate,
horrifying who has enchanted and eluded me
in that dark and deaf land, that was not mine.
I will go, doubtlessly renewed man, in search
not of a drop of water but of one rain that rains
thunder and lightning, the same like the flood
that has baptized our era.
I will reap fruits that, blessed by my hands
and hard a toil,
by sure will make me more and more strong.
I will make love to my wife in sheets of soft Chinese silk
and we will be asleep in a bed of fragrant Lebanon woods.
Not that I deserve more than Abraham,
who only had a glimpse of the Promised Land,
but, of this new one, God willing,
I will take secure possession.
Edilson Afonso Ferreira, 80 years, is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Widely published in international literary journals, he began writing at age 67, after his retirement from a bank. Since then, he counts 190 poems published, in 300 different publications. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and his first Poetry Collection – Lonely Sailor – was launched in London in 2018. His second, Joie de Vivre, has been launched in April 2022. He is always updating his works at www.edilsonmeloferreira.com.