Flávio de Araújo

The Man Mending His Net

 

The man mending his net

needle in hand

net hung on its nail.

The man mending his net

thinks about the need to stitch

pictures the fish that might escape

through that rip.

The man mending his net

mends his world.

 

The serious man

expertly threads

his needle with red line

shoos away the black fly

spits chewed nylon

offers his thoughts about the weather

which are always right.

They still listen when he says it will rain

when he says the wind will blow.

 

The man mending his net

doesn’t scold life

nor the mesh for its lack of fish

nor the big trawl ships.

 

The man mending his net

tells fisherman’s tales

with such earnestness

he doesn’t seem a fisherman.

 

The man mending his net

seems a happy man, distant

measuring in strokes

his silence, his will to live.

 

The man mending his net

and only now, to me,

my father

is just a man,

a man who mends his net.

 

 


Translated by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren

“The Man Mending His Net” was published in Asymptote, Issue 6.

 

You can read and listen to the poem in the original Portuguese here.