The Portuguese Language
Olavo Brás Martins dos Guimarães Bilac (1865-1918)
The final flower of Lazio, wild and beautiful,
is a simultaneous rising sun and dying one:
native gold, the impure gangue in gravel
the brutish mine within, veiled and hidden.
I love you this way, unknown and obscure,
loudly blaring tuba and oh so simple lyre,
You possess cannon fire, hissing tempests,
and the bending of nostalgia and tenderness!
I love your feral vitality and your fragrance
of virgin jungles and the wide blue sea!
O, brute and painful language, I love you!
The one from which I heard the maternal voice: “my son!”
and in which our Camões lamented in bitter exile,
the genius without luck and the love without luster.
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