José Tolentino Mendonça

José Tolentino Mendonça is a Portuguese poet who was born on the Atlantic island of Madeira. He spent his childhood in Angola — a Portuguese colony up until he was nine (1975), when his family returned to Madeira. He has served as a priest, teacher, and chaplain at the Catholic University in Lisbon, has held multiple visiting professorships at two Jesuit-led schools in Brazil, and is now a Cardinal at the Vatican.

Mendonça is the author of at least thirteen poetry collections in Portuguese, his first published in 1990. He was a Straus Fellow at New York University during the academic year 2011-2012. His poetic subject-matter is more often secular than religious, and yet images of faith creep in, such as in the poem “The Childhood Of Herberto Helder” where he begins,
--------“In the beginning was the island
--------although it's said
--------that the Spirit of God
--------hugged the waters”

In 2025, Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça won the Eduardo Lourenço Prize for his contribution to contemporary Portuguese culture and his role as an intellectual, humanist and poet.

The following poem was translated by Ana Hudson.

Eschatology

And, at last, God returns
full of intimacy and unexpectedness
contemplated already from centuries above
humble measure of a verbal silence
we thought destined to be lost
See God climbing the steep path
that we have paced a thousand times
and stop to wait without impatience
meek as a sick lamb
Which one of us is the other’s shadow?
Even if no pity preserves the maps
we’ll come down close behind
rampant and empty
like a tree trunk

This post was suggested by Irish poet Gerard Smyth.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.

Gerard Smyth*

Gerard Smyth is above all else, a Dublin poet. He was born in Dublin in 1951, and lives there still. He is the author of eleven books of poetry. In his most-recent collection The Turn for Ithaca (Dedalus Press, 2026), he has several poems about his city featuring various Dublin poets and artists, including Thomas Kinsella, Eavan Boland, Brendan Kennelly, and Luke Kelly (founding member of the folk group The Dubliners).

Smyth’s enriching nostalgia also reflects on musical greats from his youth, tributes to the beat poets, and acknowledgements of foreign-language poets he admires, such as Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, and Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva.

This May, my wife and I had the privilege of having lunch with Gerard Smyth, and John F. Deane, at a Dublin pub called “The Downing Well”. There we exchanged our latest poetry collections and talked of poetry — both in Ireland and Canada.

The following poem is from The Turn for Ithaca (Dedalus Press, 2026).

What the Young Saint Said

for John F Deane

Let God be God, the young saint said,
not Roman, not Greek,
or belonging only to pilgrim and conqueror
but the God of all things: the Judas Tree
and hornet’s nest, songthrush and garden slug.

Let God be God, not the bearer of so many names
or the judge who sits in the court of angels.
Let him not be the gatekeeper at the Gates of Wrath,
the tormenter of an innocent conscience.

Let God be God, the young saint said,
not the cause of holy wars
or one who sends his proxies to rob our mirth
but a God unbothered by heresies of dogma,
His presence heard in the singer’s voice,
sound of the orchestra, the iron gate
when it creaks, the bells on Paternoster Street.

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Gerard Smyth: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.

Gerard Smyth

Gerard Smyth is a Dublin poet who has authored ten poetry collections, the most recent of which is The Sundays of Eternity (2020, Dedalus Press). His earliest poetry appeared in the late ‘60s, including his first book The Flags Are Quiet (1969, New Writers’ Press). He spent his entire professional life as a journalist with The Irish Times, where he still serves as Poetry Editor.

Three of his poems are included in the landmark issue of Poetry Ireland Review (#112 ― Name and Nature: ‘Who do you say that I am?’) edited by John F. Deane, which includes poetry by Seamus Heaney, Pádraig J. Daly, and Rowan Williams.

The first of the following poems was inspired by the large-scale painting “Blue Crucifixion” by Hughie O’Donoghue. The second one, written at the beginning of our current pandemic, has been set to music by British composer Philip Lawton for the choir of Berlin's Passionskirche (Church of the Passion).

Blue Crucifixion

for Clare and Hughie O’Donoghue

Not the crudely sketched
man of sorrows
from the cover-image
of the old school catechism
that was touched
and smudged so much
it lost its mystic fragrance.

And not Gauguin’s Yellow Christ
in the Breton countryside,
a Golgotha made strange
by those maids in attendance.
Or Poussin’s Redeemer
down from the Cross
under the gaze of the spellbound.

But the Blue Crucifixion
shows a fleshy semblance
of human wreckage that belongs
to a man who was counted
among the transgressors.
Our idea of him electrified
by such mystery as art requires.

Isolation

Bunched together like a gathering tribe
the daffodils rise again and there are signs
of sun behind the clouds.
We still have bread and books
and songs to keep the radio alive.
A note through the door is a kind surprise
and birds on the branches
of the trees outside stay up late.
The mornings are not so dark,
the internet takes us to the works of art,
tunes us in to Debussy or Paul Simon,
brings us close to the faraway country
where loved ones are.
A kite above someone’s back garden
rises and dips and gives a moment of joy
to a face in the window of isolation.

March 17th-19th, 2020

Posted with permission of the poet.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Gerard Smyth: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.