Poetry: Poems Made Into Songs and Songs that Read Like Poems

I enjoy poetry. There is something extremely liberating and gratifying about finding a poem that expresses with it's beautifully descriptive words the very sentiments of your soul. It connects you to another's joy or pain that somehow may resemble your own. In its rhetoric, full of hidden meanings, you can discover shocking revelations and precious truths.

Today I want to explore three poems that were made into songs and vice versa, two of which were originally written in Portuguese and later translated to English. I chose these poems because they affected me in different ways, all profound and memorable with a haunting after effect.

The first poem was originally a song written by the Brazilian Singer/Songwriter Milton Nascimento . He composed the song in the early 1970's but released it in 1982. The title of the song - Ponta de Areia. When translated to English the song reads like a poem.


PONTA DE AREIA                                   PONTA DE AREIA - English Translation                  

Ponta de areia                                           Ponta de areia
Ponto final                                                  Last stop
Da Bahia Minas                                        From Bahia to Minas
Estrada Natural                                         A natural road

Que ligava Minas                                      That linked Minas

Ao porto ao mar                                         To the harbor, to the sea

Caminhos de ferro                                    An order was issued

Mandaram arrancar                                  To pull out the railway tracks

Velho maquinista                                      Old Locamotive Engineer

Com seu boné                                           With his cap

Lembra o povo alegre                              Remembers the cheerful people

Que vinha cortejar                                    With welcome greetings

Maria Fumaça                                           Smokey Mary

Não passa mais                                        No longer passes 

Para moças, flores,                                   by girls, flowers, 

Janelas e quintais                                     windows and backyards

Na praça vazia                                          In the empty square

Um grito, um ai…                                      A cry, a moan...

Casas esquecidas                                    Forgotten houses                                 

Viúvas nos portais…                                Widows at the front door...

Another song that reads like a poem when translated from Portuguese to English is called - "Inutil Paisagem" - "Useless Landscape". The song was written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and it is believed that the song was inspired by a poem written in English by the same name. (I have researched but could not find the author. If any of you knowledgeable poetry lovers out there can find the author please post in the comments)

USELESS LANDSCAPE - The song (which, to me, reads like a poem)

There's no use

Of a moonlight glow

Or the peaks where winter snows

What's the use of the waves that will break       

In the cool of the evening

What is the evening

Without you

Its nothing

It may be

You will never come

If you never come to me

What's the use of my wonderful dreams

And why would they need me

Where would they lead me

Without you

To nowhere

USELESS LANDSCAPE - The original poem

What purpose do the heavens hold?


What meaning have the seas?


Forwhy these waves so bleak and cold?


Forwhy this evening breeze?


Wherefore the lonely sandy cape,


Which bulges from the shore


And makes this useless land & scape


A scene which I adore?



Now it may be that I’m alone,


And my whole heart is sore,


That all your flowers, sown and grown


With love, might be no more,


Those blossoms which adorned our trails;


Those paths which we had wrought –


May wither, then our fairytales

May all have been for naught.

Last but by no means least we have the poem that was turned into a song. The poem - "The Fly"- was written by the English poet - "William Blake". Once made into a song the title was changed to "Little Fly".

THE FLY

The illustrated version of "The Fly" from Copy F of Songs of Innocence and Experience
currently held at the Yale Center for British Art

Little fly

Thy summer's play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink & sing;
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath;
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

All these poems/songs have one thing in common. They were all brought into the spotlight recently by the lovely and talented jazz singer Esperanza Spalding. Click on their titles to see her or hear her perform them. Little Fly, Inutil Paisagem (Useless Landscape) and Ponta de Areia.

E N J O Y!