Maria Thereza Alves

 
Land
Recipes for Survival
Communal
Destabilizers
Birds
Seeing you
Water
Utopia
We
Borders
Plants
X

Hail Mary

X

Hail Mary, 1983

A Poem

I began writing poems in my early teens and even thought to put them to music and tried to learn guitar but unfortunately, my part of the family is not musical. Although a native Portuguese speaker, I grew up in New York and thus my poetry was written in English. Each poem written was a necessity and I therefore experimented with language to liberate it for the poetic urgencies.


Hail Mary

Hail Mary, while the rains don’t stop pouring.
Hail Mary, while the beans, rice and corn drown.
Hail Mary, while the whooping cough kids -
Hail Mary, cough.
Hail Mary, while you sell the horses,
Hail Mary, sell the ducks, chickens, goats,
Hail Mary, sell the rice thresher, sell the stove.
Hail Mary, while your field-bent husband plows
Hail Mary, plows with no horses.
Hail Mary, while the bank forecloses your land.
Hail Mary, while you pray as the rain pours.
Hail Mary, as you pray for the rain to stop.
Hail Mary, as the rain doesn’t stop.
Hail Mary, as the rain doesn’t stop.
Hail Mary, what do you do now?

Maria Thereza Alves, 1983

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