Echoes of the Tides

By Adelina DaSilva

Echoes Of The Tides mirrors the life experiences of immigrants. The book pictures different facets of life; in the author's home country and the United States. Poems about social awkwardness and acceptance of new endeavors intertwine. In a hybrid language Cabo -Verdean Creole and English some poems also denote serious matters and cultural misco

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Mar 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781953616241

Adelina DaSilva

"Adelina C. da Silva was born in the Island of Fogo, in the Republic of Cabo Verde. She immigrated to the United States in 1976. Adelina is an English as a Second Language and English Language Arts teacher in Boston, Massachusetts. She has been teaching at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School for 36 years where she's taught students from Africa, Central and South America, Carribean Islands and Vietnam. Adelina writes in Cabo Verdean Creole, her native language, Portuguese and English. She received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in 2005 from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusettes. Some of Adelina's poems in Portuguese and Cabo Verdean Creole were published in Arquipelago, a magazine published in Boston in the 1990s. Two of Adelina's poems in Portuguese and English are published in Transactions of the American Philosophy Society, Volume 82, Part 4, 1992 Changing Africa: The First Literary Generation Of Independent Cape Verde by Gerald M. Moser."

Book preview

Echoes of the Tides

Copyright © 2021 by Adelina C. da Silva

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-953616-23-4

ISBN eBook: 978-1-953616-24-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of ReadersMagnet, LLC.

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Book design copyright © 2021 by ReadersMagnet, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Ericka Obando

Interior design by Shemaryl Tampus

for my mother

Contents

My Race Began

Section One

Fogo

The House Near Alto de São Pedro

The Pelourinho in Ribeira Grande, Santiago

Mulata

The Fisherman’s Fate

The Dry Season Fogo, 1983

The Candy Seller from Rua Serpa Pinto

A Warning

My Childhood Days

After the Drought

Mininu di Rua

Longing

Do Not Cry for the Children

Gethsemane

The Sound of Pilon

Bila Riba

Section Two

Chamada from America

The Immigrant Road

Echoes of the Tides

The Saddest of All Sad Poems

Nothing is the Same

Mirror, My Companion

The Poem I Will Never Write

I Stand Waiting

Pictures in a Curio

A Girl Should,

Mother’s Superstitions

Queen for a Day

Voices

Side Streets

When Fall Meets Winter,

The Birds are Flying South

Under The Eagle’s Wings

Section Three

The Weekly Meeting

The Man Who Came Looking For Riches in the 70s

Mudjer di Mercanu

American No Understand

Everythin Hava Prizi

English Learners

Illegal Alien

Everythin Diferenti

English as a Second Language

Nhonho’s Return 1962

Going Back Home

Traveling on a Not so High Way

The Morning I Woke Up in America

My Race Began

Quando o descobridor chegou a primeira ilha

Nem homens nus

Nem mulheres nuas

Espreitando

Inocentes e medrosos

Detras da vegetação.

          Jorge Barbosa

Yes, when the explorer came to the first island

There were no naked men or naked women

Watching innocently and fearfully

Behind the vegetation.

The tall ships with men holding canons

came from the north to the crescent islands

of rain with no ground to teal,

and no reason to remain

yet they conquered and placed their monuments.

The wild birds flew away,

the songbirds cried.

On parchment paper the explorers

would write a letter to El-Rei.

The islands stood naked; the sea

their only lover. The king with his dreams

of gold and spice a market

of men would set up

in Ribeira Grande.

Nigero-Senegalese, Sudanese,

Haussas, Minas and Bantus

would be bought and sent

as far as the Antilles.

In the islands, Jews, European

adventurers, refugees,

political exiles and