(Artist unknown--from this site)
In 1972, Brazilian pop and jazz composer Antonio Carlos (“Tom”) Jobim first recorded his wondrously, unassumingly strange song Waters of March. According to Wikipedia, “In 2001, Águas de Março [the original title, in Portuguese] was named as the all-time best Brazilian song in a poll of more than 200 Brazilian journalists, musicians and other artists...”
It’s a fascinating song -- beguilingly banal in many places, with sudden glimpses of epiphanies almost zen-like, in evoking, or invoking, the extraordinary in the ordinary. And behind, beneath, or beyond all that there seems to be a leitmotif revisited with a phrase that echoes the title:
And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March
it’s the end of the strain
it’s the joy in your heart.
-- which when reprised at the end changes “the strain” to the deeper “all strain” -- the end which is the transcendent substance of faith (in the sense of Hebrews 11:1 as further amplified by philosopher Eric Voegelin and Catholic existentialist Miguel de Unamuno), with further resonances in T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding and Dry Salvages from his Four Quartets:
the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England [or wherever you, the reader are] and nowhere. Never and always.
. . .
The point of intersection of the timeless / With time
. . .
[where] the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
. . .
Or, as Tom Jobim’s song says:
it’s a beam, it’s a void,
it’s a hunch, it’s a hope.
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
A stick a stone:
it’s the end of the road
it’s the rest of a stump
it’s a little alone.
It’s a sliver of glass
it is life, it’s the sun
it is night, it is death
it’s a trap, it’s a gun.
The oak when it blooms
a fox in the brush
the knot in the wood
the song of a thrush.
The wood of the wind
a cliff, a fall
a scratch, a lump
it is nothing at all.
It’s the wind blowing free
it’s the end of the slope
it’s a beam, it’s a void,
it’s a hunch, it’s a hope.
And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March
it’s the end of the strain
it’s the joy in your heart.
The foot, the ground,
the flesh and the bone,
the beat of the road,
a slingshot stone.
A fish, a flash!
A silvery glow,
a fight, a bet,
the range of a bow,
the bed of the well,
the end of the line,
the dismay in the face,
it’s a loss, it’s a find.
A spear, a spike,
a point, a nail,
a drip, a drop,
the end of the tale.
A truckload of bricks,
in the soft morning light,
the sound of a shot
in the dead of the night.
A mile, a must,
a thrust, a bump,
it’s a girl, it’s a rhyme,
it’s the cold, it’s the mumps.
The plan of the house,
the body in bed,
and the car that got stuck
it’s the mud, it’s the mud.
A float, a drift,
a flight, a wing,
a hawk, a quail,
the promise of Spring.
And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
it’s the promise of life,
it’s the joy in your heart:
[Interlude]
A snake, a stick!
It is John it is Joe
it’s a thorn in your hand
and a cut in your toe.
A point, a grain,
a bee, a bite,
a blink, a buzzard,
a sudden stroke of night.
A pass in the mountains,
a horse and a mule,
in the distance the shelves
rode three shadows of blue.
And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
it’s the promise of life,
in your heart, in your heart.
A stick a stone...
the end of the load
the ash of a log
a lonesome road.
A sliver of glass
a life, the sun,
a night, a death
the end of the run.
And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
it’s the end of all strain,
it’s the joy in your heart...
1 comment:
Here's a link to the video for "Waters of March":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3oNSFQVzNM
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