Gaivota

I have spent many years crying over this song, never knowing what it means, not caring what it means:

Se uma gaivota viesse
Trazer-me o céu de lisboa
No desenho que fizesse,
Nesse céu onde o olhar
É uma asa que não voa,
Esmorece e cai no mar.

Que perfeito coração
No meu peito bateria,
Meu amor na tua mão,
Nessa mão onde cabia
Perfeito o meu coração.

Se um português marinheiro,
Dos sete mares andarilho,
Fosse quem sabe o primeiro
A contar-me o que inventasse,
Se um olhar de novo brilho
No meu olhar se enlaçasse.

Que perfeito coração
No meu peito bateria,
Meu amor na tua mão,
Nessa mão onde cabia
Perfeito o meu coração.

Se ao dizer adeus à vida
As aves todas do céu,
Me dessem na despedida
O teu olhar derradeiro,
Esse olhar que era só teu,
Amor que foste o primeiro.

Que perfeito coração
No meu peito morreria,
Meu amor na tua mão,
Nessa mão onde perfeito
Bateu o meu coração.

For years I felt that I knew enough: Lisboa, gaivota, coração (Lisbon, seagull, heart) -- one understands enough, no? Certainly enough to cry in one's cups in the hour before dawn.

And now, willy nilly, I find that Portuguese is rubbing off on me -- undesired, unbeknownst -- and that I now know what the song says -- and, guess what, no, I don't, no, not really.

For it says this:

Oh that a seagull could come
And draw for me the sky of Lisbon
In a drawing he sketched
In that sky where to look
Is to be like a wing that fails to fly
Faints and falls into the sea.

Oh that a perfect heart
Could beat in my chest --
My love in your hand --
This hand where it fit
So perfectly, my heart.

Oh that a Portuguese sailor,
Wanderer of the seven seas,
Who knows just the thing
To tell me first of all that he has discovered,
Oh that a gaze at the new brilliance
Might become ensnared in my looking.

Oh that a perfect heart
Could beat in my chest --
My love in your hand --
This hand where it fit
So perfectly, my heart.

Oh that saying goodbye to life
All the birds of the sky
Could give me in their farewell
Your last gaze,
That gaze that was solely yours
Love that oh were it could have been the first.

Oh that a perfect heart
Could beat in my chest --
My love in your hand --
This hand where it fit
So perfectly, my heart.

Which is what I had known for years already: Lisboa, gaivota, coração. All this time here, all that stealthy, unplanned for linguistic progress amounts to a single gain: the image of one's gaze cast into the liquid sky of Lisboa dropping down into the sea like Icarus, like a seagull which has fainted on the wing, fainted on the wing with pleasure.

I will leave my beloved Lisboa soon to go to other lands, other sea coasts, and when there I will remember (whenever I see a sea gull) to say to myself: oh that that sea gull might bring me a piece of the sky of Lisboa.

(Sniff).