Sampa [English translation]

Something happens in my heart

Only when it crosses Ipiranga and São João Avenue (1)

When I first got here I understand anything

Not the concrete poetry of your street corners

Not the discreet inelegance of your girls

I didn't know, Rita Lee, (2)

Your most thorough translation

Something happens in my heart

Only when it crosses Ipiranga and São João Avenue

When we were face to face I didn't recognized myself

I called what I saw bad taste, I called bad taste, bad taste

Because Narcissus thinks that what is not a mirror is ugly

And what is not yet old scares the mind

Nothing from before when you are not changeable (3)

And you were a difficult beginning

Away from what I don't know

And those who sell a different dream of a happy city

Soon learn to call you reality

Because you are the reverse of the reverse of the reverse

From the people oppressed in the waiting lines, in the small streets, in shanty towns (4)

From the power of the money that builds and destroys beauty

From the ugly smoke that rises and erases the stars

I can see your poets of fields and spaces

Your forest factories, your rain gods rise

Pan-Americas from utopian Africas, tomb of samba

The newest of Zumbi's quilombos (5)

And the new Bahians walk thru your drizzle (6,7)

And the new Bahians can get into it and enjoy you

• Artist:Caetano Veloso