English Song: Waters of March

Song Title: Waters of March
Artist: Art Garfunkel


(A. C. Jobin)

A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road,

It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone,

It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun,

It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun.

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush,

The nod of the wood, the song of a thrush,

The wood of the wing, a cliff, a fall,

A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all.

It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of a slope,

It's a bean, it's a void, it's a hunch, it's a hope.

And the riverbank talks of the Waters of March,

It's the end of the strain, it's the joy in your heart.

The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone,

The beat of the road, a sling-shot stone,

A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light,

The shot of a gun in the dead of the night.

A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump,

It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps.

The plan of the house, the body in bed,

And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud.

Afloat, adrift, a flight, a wing,

A cock, a quail, the promise of spring.

And the riverbank talks of the Waters of March,

It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart.

A point, a grain, a bee, a bite,

A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night,

A pin, a needle, a sting, a pain,

A snail, a riddle, a wasp, a stain.

A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe,

A fish, a flash, a silvery glow.

And the riverbank talks of the Waters of March,

It's the promise of life in your heart, in your heart.

A stick, a stone, the end of the load,

The rest of a stump, a lonesome road.

A sliver of glass, a life, the sun,

A night, a death, the end of the run.

And the riverbank talks of the Waters of March,

It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart.

Waters of March
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
 
"Waters of March" (Portuguese: "Águas de Março") is a bossa nova song composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Jobim wrote both the English language and Portuguese lyrics. When writing the English lyrics, Jobim endeavored to avoid words with Latin roots resulting in the English version having more verses than the Portuguese. Another way in which the English lyrics differ from the Portuguese is that the English version treats March from the perspective of an observer in the northern hemisphere. In this context, the waters are the "waters of defrost" in contrast to the rains referenced in the original Portuguese, marking the end of summer and the beginning of the colder season in the southern hemisphere.[1].

In 2001, "Águas de Março" was named as the all-time best Brazilian song in a poll of more than 200 Brazilian journalists, musicians and other artists conducted by Brazil's leading daily newspaper, Folha de São Paulo.

The song lyrics, originally written in Portuguese, do not tell a story, but rather present a series of images that form a collage; nearly every line starts with "É..." ("[It] is...").

In both the Portuguese and English versions of the lyrics, "it" is a stick, a stone, a sliver of glass, a scratch, a cliff, a knot in the wood, a fish, a pin, the end of the road, and many other things, although some specific references to Brazilian culture (festa da cumeeira, garrafa de cana), flora (peroba do campo) and folklore (Matita Pereira) were intentionally omitted from the English version, perhaps with the goal of providing a more universal perspective. All these details swirling around the central metaphor of "the waters of March" can give the impression of the passing of daily life and its continual, inevitable progression towards death, just as the rains of March mark the end of a Brazilian summer. Both sets of lyrics speak of the water being "the promise of life," perhaps allowing for other, more life-affirming interpretations, and the English contains the additional phrases "the joy in your heart" and the "promise of spring," a seasonal reference that would be more relevant to most of the English-speaking world.

The inspiration for "Águas de Março" comes from Rio de Janeiro's most rainy month. March is typically marked by sudden storms with heavy rains and strong winds that cause flooding in many places around the city. The lyrics and the music have a constant downward progression much like the water torrent from those rains flowing in the gutters, which typically would carry sticks, stones, bits of glass, and almost everything and anything. The orchestration creates the illusion of the constant descending of notes much like Shepard tones.

The song was used by Coca-Cola for a television commercial in the mid-1980s, and is currently the track for a 2008 British Gas advert in the UK.

Composer-guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves[2] relates that Jobim told him that writing in this kind of stream of consciousness was his version of therapy and saved him thousands in psychoanalysis bills.

Prof. Charles A. Perrone, an authority on contemporary Brazilian popular music (MPB), wrote about the song in his doctoral dissertation (1985), an abridged version of which was published in Brazil as Letras e Letras da MPB (1988). He notes such sources for the song as the folkloric samba-de-matuto and a classic poem of pre-Modernist Brazilian literature.

References

1. ^ AllBrazilianMusic.com
2. ^ Oscar Castro-Neves (Portuguese)

Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waters_of_March