The Capital of São Miguel

Trim, slim, graceful-
the meanings of this
word when I was a boy
growing up knowing
something but not
everything about
words I heard in this
language that was more
mine then-the meanings
of this word used always
about women and girls
who might or might not
have been delicate in
manner or mien and which
I have never used to mean
anything else works hard
against the point being made
about this homely city
tight by the bay barrier
enhancing its harbor’s
functions and the sea
that opens out everywhere
down to the arced horizon
unthreatened, the main streets
of Ponta Delgada are like waves
breaking on the slopes
of the city.  The main streets
of Ponta Delgada: waves
broken on the low slopes.

Ponta Delgada, São Miguel
3 Oct. 1987

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.