São Paulo Ballad 1

São Paulo Ballad 1

This is my tale of a big City. I spent some time here, but never enough to really know it. I think not even the people who live there do...
So it became a very personal thing, and although I claim that I don't love this place, a good old friend of mine says, I already do very much. Maybe, even though I don't believe it...
I wrote this poem in English, because my Portuguese is not good enough by far, and most of my Brazilian friends don't speak enough German to understand, so, please, excuse strange language, rhymes and metrics.


São Paulo Ballad

An ocean of buildings. My blue-white bird glides
Above rubbish-made-shelters and houses like gems
Over palaces, tenements, shed-slums: the lights
Of hundreds of yellow McDonald's "M"s.
Roofs corrugated, and roofs tiled with gold,
A place, where five continents melt into one
Where everything's bought - and everything's sold
And the tears just an alley away from the fun.

An ocean this city can be, far from shores:
White taxi-boats sailing between concrete waves.
Workers, and beggars, and bankers, and whores,
Some children of masters, some parents of slaves.
If you're looking for difference, here is its home:
Millions of destinies cling to these hills
All in one mass, and each of its own,
behind the bright and dark window sills.

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