Saudade Street

Rua da Saudade — Saudade Street
Bulldozers coming Monday
Costa do Sol smells like prawns and salt
Tonight this street plays one last song

Forty years this corner's had a house band
Same three chords, same cracked plaster wall
Dona Rosa's sold cashews here since before I was born
Tonight she closes early — she's dancing
Her hand-painted sign has faded red
The guitar neck is taped in two places
Same guitar that played my parents' wedding
The operator's sleeping somewhere tonight
Doesn't know what he's coming to take down

Obrigado to the walls, obrigado to the floor
Obrigado to every night this corner gave us more

Saudade Street, play it once more
Play it loud before they tear it down
They can take the building, brick by brick
They can't take what happened on this street

Saudade, saudade
Dona Rosa's dancing
Saudade, saudade
This corner made us who we are

Dona Rosa met her husband right there
Beside the cashew stand in eighty-one
Tio Fernando learned guitar on that wall
Watching through the window, too broke to enter
Every regular's got a story in this corner
Nobody leaves before they tell it once
The demolition sign is peeling at the edges
Paper knows dates, memory knows names

Saudade Street, play it once more
Play it loud before they tear it down
They can take the building, brick by brick
They can't take what happened on this street

Dona Rosa leads!
Tio Fernando answers!
Both together!
Loud enough for Monday!

This is where I had my first dance
This is where I proposed, badly, twice
This is where my mother taught me the words
This is where we put grief inside a song
Dona Rosa raises her cup — obrigada, all of you
The bulldozer can have the walls
We already carried the rest home

Saudade Street, play it once more
Play it loud before they tear it down
They can take the building, brick by brick
They can't take what happened on this street

Dona Rosa's cashews, Fernando's guitar
Every story travels wherever we are
Saudade Street lives on
Wherever we open next
First light, brick dust in the air
Dona Rosa's already looking two blocks over
Same cashews, same guitar, same us
Saudade Street