Elide V. OLIVER professes Brazilian Literature and Writing in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis USA. Her recent publications include a review of Fernando Pessoa and Co., Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Richard Zennith and Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, published by the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, as well as The Third Bank of the River. Time-flow and Paternity in João Guimarães Rosa (with reflections on Carlos Drummond de Andrade and James Joyce), published by The Modern Humanities Research Association, Portuguese Studies, London.  

ABOUT LIFE ON MARS

There is the assertion that the residues
Found in Mars' meteorites - minerii - were life
Some four billion years ago.
The possible traces of life are miniscule disks
Incrusted on the surface. One wonders barnacles
Or bigger beings on the crust,
As Earth life gathers together in vain
One wonders life like barnacles, then. Washed life
By the coming and going of the wind tides
Dry like brandy flowing down the throat: inside life.
Outside, yet, there was life on Mars, so it is said,
And life is washed bones on the shore left unattended
Debris of a slow, psychic calcination that is produced
In the furnace of emotions.
Phoenix or raven, Life is reborn from the ashes
That were, but never from the void, or rather
Life's to be robbed or bartered like a nugget.

Copyright © Elide V. Oliver, 2000.  All Rights Reserved.
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