Saudade is a Portuguese word (pronounced approximately “saw dah djay”) meaning a state of sorrow or longing for something or someone that is gone forever. For example, saudade might describe the despair of a mother about the death of a child or the sense of loss of exiles for their homeland. In this poem, I chose the common example of the pain someone feels about lost love, which is the subject for several fine songs in Portuguese, hence my reference to fado, a genre of Portuguese music typically about mournful themes.
Jim Harrison says this about saudade: “…a person or place or sense of life irretrievably lost; a shadow of your own making that follows you, and though often forgotten can at any moment give rise to heartache, an obtuse sentimentality, a sharp anger that you are not located where you wish to be, an irrational and childish melancholy that you have cheated yourself of being married to a life essence that you have never been able to quite gather to yourself.”
Saudade
I think of her every day
A fado of lost love
Distilled into three
Syllables
A long moan of grief
Sliding to a cry of regret
And last, a sigh
Of remorse
Fading to silence
Something of a language of love, of poetic expression, as is Spanish. We could use more of this in our own language and daily usage. Too much time and effort is spent seeking out meaningless material for entertainment.
I agree about both words and entertainment. A fine Spanish word I use is tertulia, a gathering of friends and acquaintances to drink and talk. I was a member of a tertulia for a decade in San Francisco that only just ended with the group grew too small. As far as entertainment, Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex. What is just as frightening as recent events have shown is the entertainment complex with its enormous power to influence us.
I feel a deep sigh. Very well expressed.
Yes, it is such an evocative word, like schadenfreude.