The Mboi-Tatá

poem by Ruth Salles

That's when the big snake
– the mboi-guaçu – always ate the eyes
of the animals he hunted.
From those eyes, it was in your bulge
the light they kept
of the last clarity they looked at.

And the great night came, and the light was gone.
And like the mboi-guaçu
I didn't have hair like the ox has,
nor armadillo shell,
nor thick leather like the tapir has,
nor ostrich feathers,
happened, in the darkness that was so much,

that your skin was leaking light
of devoured eyes.
It became a half-blue fire,
passing here and there.
Big snake turned into fire snake,
became mboi-tatá.

It snaked its serpent body,
transparent and shiny,
lightening the dark night a little.
But nothing ever lasts...
And the mboi-tatá died, and the light so beautiful,
inside her body,
loose, unleashed across the world,
it cleared everything up.

And suddenly the big night is gone,
the stars came,
and then the moon in the shape of a sickle,
after full moon.

And then the beautiful sun rose in the sky!
And, look, there it is,
like the fire of the mboi-tatá,
that curls like a ball
and sometimes runs through the night.

***