by godariush cigarrinha
8. the end - listen to the cigarras
fifty years the cigarras have been singing their warning to Brasilia:
take your people and go, just go
there are no deserts, no seas to cross, we will even feed you, if we must
with the remains of our old ones, with the husks of our young
dropping from the tormented heaven of the planalto
the cigarras are giant houseflies the colour of moths
desiccated yellow they sit dead on my stairs in the morning
sometime between the early seventies and the late
at the same time (coincidentally?) that, in Rio, the samba changed
more or less at the same time
the cigarras also changed their song
they had been singing the same one too long, about twenty years
with no one ever recognising, no one authenticating their signature tune
in the office of reconhecimento de firmas
so they changed for the first time
they had been listening – during the hours of their silence they listen
(our sounds pollute their dreams - is that why they hate us so much?)
they had been listening to the electronic age taking hold
in the commercial sectors, the government sectors, all the sectors
of Brasilia, and their new voices mimicked the static of our digital machines
indeed the violence of the new sound expressed very well their frustration
at twenty years without recognition
perhaps, perhaps they thought, if we would not listen then our machines would hear
and be our prophets
take your people and go, they sang (to the machines)
in the 1980s the cigarras, who are democrats, incorporated their delight at the
fall of the dictatorship, in a second change – they began to grow teeth
they knew they would need teeth to see them through
the end of history
the neoliberal hegemony
and after the 2001 presidential election some amongst the cigarras
who had lost their wits
believed there would be change, that the new administration
might actually listen
but that didn’t last long
we won't be fooled again, they sing
take your people and go, they sing
and they have added a new note to that signature tune (the third and last change)
which has never been recognised in the office of reconhecimento de firmas
(now not even the most brazen of optimists amongst them expects
that recognition will ever come)
you see over the last 240 generations of cigarras
(roughly since the inception of the monthly payments affair)
the species has been evolving not just telescopic fangs
but a second stomach for processing flesh
human flesh
and they are preparing to rain a plague of blood on the people of brasilia
who never got the message
who never recognised their signature tune
who left them standing in the queue in the office of reconhecimento de firmas
for fifty years
and now not even the most brazenly optimistic of them believes it still isn’t too late
for the long red night not to fall
and they have given no signs by which the believers amongst us
may mark our doors
because there are no believers - not even i, writing this, really
take the cigarras seriously enough
yellow desiccated overgrown houseflies
dead on my stairs in the morning
not even i take them seriously
but i am wrong
