Port of
Leaving, a
collection of poetry from Finishing Line Press, by Roberto Christiano is a
journey into the suffering inherent within the human condition. The origin of
this poet’s suffering emanates ancestrally and psychically from the Portuguese
port of departure (leaving) Salir do Porto and includes the hard-to-define
Portuguese word saudade. Saudade infuses into suffering a longing for
something that may never be achieved.
Christiano’s
yearning (saudade) initially springs from the love and acceptance he wanted
from his Portuguese father, a man who was a bricklayer.
Driving
through Georgetown
on a congested Friday afternoon,
I find myself stopped
behind a truckload of bricks
when my father comes to me—
red brown in his Portuguese skin.
“I’m a bricklayer by trade,”
he often says,
and his hands show it—
all calloused like tree bark.
excerpt from “My Father Is a Bricklayer”
Despite
his father not speaking English well and disapproving of the poet’s choice of a
career in acting, this man would attend his son’s performances.
Although
my father never approved of acting,
he came
to see every play I was in.
His favorites were A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and
Macbeth. …
My
father’s choices bewildered me—
he
spoke a broken English at best,
and the
only thing he read
was the front page of the paper.
excerpt
from “My Father and Shakespeare at the Sylvan Amphitheater”
As a child, the poet was not allowed by his
father to speak during dinner, so he tested his father (who loved to play the
accordion) by singing.
I was
not permitted a word at dinner
because
you were too hot from laying
brick
in the sun to bear the voices
of children …
Sometimes
I ventured a phrase,
but you
pushed me down quick.
“You no speak. You have no responsibility.”
The r
in responsibility you would hit
with a rough Portuguese trill.
…
I
watched how playing your accordion
for
hours into the night soothed you.
Above
the keys in gleaming silver
cursive
was written Excelsior.
Since
the accordion weighed too much
to pick
up, I began to sing—
often in the middle of dinner.
excerpt
from “Why I Sang at Dinner”
The poet
suggests by noting the word Excelsior that the accordion had a higher
purpose. His father neither stopped his son from singing nor showed approval.
In the
wake of the father’s inability to verbally express the love and acceptance his
son wanted, Christiano’s narrative, free verse or prose poems are often
emotionally flat, but not so in his title poem “Salir do Porto” which ends with
these lines:
I will
not find the words to say to you—
little
leaving port of Portugal
to whom I am forever returning.
What
words could ever say
how he left me who cannot swim,
standing
on your shore of sorrow?
Truth-telling
and clarity comes across with this writing style of emotional flatness which
invites the reader to reflect deeply on what the poet has presented. For example, in “Flight,” we
learn about the painstaking efforts the father makes to save a baby bird.
A baby
blackbird
falls from a nest.
He struggles
to fly and fails.
My father picks him up,
sticks
him in a cage,
puts him in the basement.
The
blackbird refuses
the
worms I offer him,
the same with flax seeds.
Father
mashes leftover bread,
takes
the blackbird
in his bricklayer hands,
feeds him mouth to beak.
…
The son tries to feed the bird but fails. The
father succeeds and releases the blackbird into the “cold, crisp air” and the
bird opens his wings and flies. The emotion that the narrator (son) feels (What
if he can’t fly?—because he is the empathic one) is down played. The mood
shifts to neutral because nature takes over—the father releases the bird. There
is no drama. The son’s angst is down played and so there is, in this reviewer’s
opinion, an emotional flatness providing clarity in just stating what happened.
This writing approach makes room for seeing the quiet goodness and parental leadership
of the father.
“He
will fly,”
Father
says,
pushing
open the screen door,
advancing
into the backyard.
With
both hands,
he throws the blackbird
into
the cold, crisp air
…
Sections 2
and 3 of Port of Leaving open outward to Relatives and Portugal
and the World. However, the poet’s father is present in these two sections
of the book as well. For example, in “Coke Memories”, the featured relative is
the poet’s Great Aunt Anna who “remembers when the real thing/ first came out”
and how Coke made one feel good. After all the poet writes:
In
1886, Coke first appeared
as a patented medicine—
a digestive and headache remedy
as well
as an impotence aid.
Each
glass contained nine
milligrams
of cocaine.
The poem
ends with the poet’s father thinking Coke would cure his acne:
He
pedaled barefoot
on a bicycle
through miles and miles
of
poverty and sorrow
to buy
a Coke
because
he believed
it
would cure him.
The last
section of the book reveals a family secret—the poet’s family had Jews who
converted to Catholicism. Several times the poet asks his father what happened
to the Jews? (First in section 1 “Hitler’s Trains” and later Section 3 “The
Past Is Never Dead.” The poet provides the explanation in “The Wars of Rosemary
and Marjoram”:
My
father’s town was founded by two families—the Cristãos and the Alecrims.
The two
families intermarried. My grandparents were first cousins.
We all turned out inbred, depressed, and nearsighted.
In
1497, Manoel the First of Portugal demanded that all Jews convert or leave.
Some
left. Some converted. Some pretended. Some changed their names
to the names of herbs. They were called the New Christians or Conversos—
the converted
ones.
Somewhere
along the line in America, Cristão proved too challenging
and
turned into Christiano. I came to hate it. I always thought Christiano
sounded
like a stage name. And then there was history—
the history of Christianity to salt the wound.
In the
rollicking 1730’s, the toast of the Lisbon theatre
was Antonio José da Silva. He wrote delicious skits with songs
satirizing politics and the bourgeoisie. Most of his plays were for puppets.
His big
hit was The Wars of Rosemary and Marjoram.
The King just adored him. His nickname was The Jew.
Every
Thanksgiving my favorite cousin, Elizabet Alecrim, tells me all the dirt,
…
I
invite Cousin Elizabet to sit in the seat of honor. I begin to carve
the
clove studded ham. She pours herself some wine and says,
“Have I
told you yet that we have Jewish blood in the family?
After all these years, I did the Ancestry thing, and well, now I know
why
Alecrim means rosemary.”
Port of
Leaving by Roberto
Christiano is a compelling journey of self-examination that opens out to the
world we live in. It is a song in the fado tradition—“Blues of Longing”. It’s a
tradition that Christiano willingly shares:
What I
sang was sadness.
It was not my sadness.
It was
ours.
excerpt
from “Memoir”
