Poeta Feliz

This patriarch sits
and knows secrets

he’d tell at the drop
of a pin if he thought

their telling would
bring him justice,

get him his overdue.
A shock of white hair

perched above black,
bushy brows, signals

duration, durability,
endurance, patience.

Poetry makes little
things happen for

those who monitor
the world’s ins and

outs, gathering wool &
moss & stones, when

a moment’s flicker
turns away the dark.

                 George Monteiro

                 Providence, RI
                 26 Apr. 1993

George Monteiro is Professor Emeritus of English and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University, and he continues as Adjunct Professor of Portuguese Studies at the same university.  He served as Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Brazil– Sao Paulo and Bahia–Ecuador and Argentina; and as Visiting Professor in UFMG in Belo Horizonte.  In 2007 he served as Helio and Amelia Pedroso / Luso-American Foundation Professor of Portuguese, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.  Among his recent books are Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage, Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, The Presence of Pessoa, The Presence of Camões, and Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop and Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Among his translations are  Iberian Poems by Miguel Torga, A Man Smiles at Death with Half a Face by José Rodrigues Miguéis, Self-Analysis and Thirty Other Poems by Fernando Pessoa, and In Crete, with the Minotaur, and Other Poems by Jorge de Sena.  He has also published two collections of poems, The Coffee Exchange and Double Weaver’s Knot.