In “A Story with Choirs,” childhood is presented as a lost paradise and at the same time always thrilling in the author’s desires and experiences. In lines like “Oh! Life is beautiful!/ Ideas pinch me/ like piabinhas in the stream/ pinch my legs”, ordinary events become a celebration of life and portraits of the search for beauty and the resignification of the mundane: everything that was “when I was little and I ate everything and lots of it” is now poetry. “The workshop stopped at half past four, the father ate first and then took a shower./Everything hasn’t happened yet.” Time expands, mixes with present reality, and everyday life, in all its small things, turns out to be grandiose.
The body, with its strengths and weaknesses, is another central axis of the work. In “Pills in Hand,” Adelia addresses physical vulnerability with honesty and humor: “A desperate compassion is already beginning to hover,/ the hungry animal,/ the sign that the pack is stalking me,/ the slightest hesitation knocks me down./ The body sets off its alarms,/ the drowsiness, the sharp bites on the tongue,/ the tired mechanical breathing./ Dying is very difficult. Pain, old age, the precariousness of existence are recognized with a clarity that does not exempt it from mystery. It is the human body as an instrument of perception, but also as a receptacle of suffering and grace. The presence of God – which Adelia encounters throughout the work – appears as a large refuge, far from dogmatism. “It is possible that the bishop will refuse me, because I like to catechize”; poetry allows the sacred to manifest itself to the senses in the aroma of dry grass, in the mother’s song, and to transform everyday life into a transcendental experience: “God will say to me, when I die:/ Take, my daughter, the writing on this lot of stones/ eternity is yours/ smell the dry grass by the side of the railway,/ see your father making war with the leaf cutter/ and hear your mother sing.” Just like Jesus in the Garden of Olives, the poet bows before the divine, in search of meaning, abandonment and companionship.
“The Garden of Olives” is therefore a space for contemplation and reconciliation with one’s own existence. The intensity with which Adelia revisits the past – imbued with nostalgia and reverence – also extends to her reflections on the body and finitude. Each poem presents itself as a call for attention and wonder at the sacredness that permeates life, confirming the poetic strength of Adélia Prado, whose writing remains capable of capturing the sublime and the contradictions of human experience.
Bethânia Pires Amaro is a writer, winner of the Sesc, APCA and Jabuti prizes
“The Garden of Olives”
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