Brazilian poet Adelia Prado, Winner of the 2014 Griffin Trust Lifetime Achievement Award
Object of Affection
What I have to tell you
is of such high order and so precious
that if I kept to myself
it would feel like stealing;
the asshole is beautiful!
Make what you will of this gift.
As for me – grateful to know this,
I feel not forgiveness but love.
Adelia Prado from The Mystical Rose – Selected Poems, trans. Ellen Dore Watson, Bloodaxe Books, 2014
Adelia Prado. Mystical grandmotherly-looking octogenarian from Brazil. So often she surprises with her salty tongue, her playful irreverence. Her passion that strips all so-called properness away. As at home in her poems celebrating sex and its erotic connection to the divine as she is writing devotional prayer poems of love to God!
I have written a number of blogs on Prado including one earlier this year and here’s the link to the one celebrating her 2014 Griffin Trust Lifetime Achievement Award. But after I came across the gem of a poem above a few weeks ago I wanted to highlight her again by adding this poem to my The Bigness of Small Poems series.
Talk about surprise and freshness deep down things as Gerard Manley Hopkins would say. This celebration of our human body in her little poem. Not just the nice bits. After all, without the asshole where would we be? I am grateful to Prado for the reminder: to love all of me. And maybe when I hear the whisper: you’re an asshole I’ll reply: that’s not so bad!