(the first three lines on the text on line are the name of the song and of the singer/songwriter, it starts at “Alguma coisa”)
Something happens in my heart
Only when it crosses Ipiranga and São João Avenue (two streets in the city)
When I got here I didn't understand anything
Not the concrete poetry of your street corners
Not the discreet inelegance of your girls
I didn't know Rita Lee (a singer from São Paulo)
Your most thorough interpretation
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 a mutant (Mutantes was the name of Rita Lee's band)
And you were a difficult beginning
I get away of what I don't know
And those who sell a different dream of a happy city
Soon learn to call you reality
Because your are the other side of the other side of the other side of the side
From the people oppressed in the waiting lines, in the small streets, in shanty towns
From the power of the money rising and destroying beauty
From the ugly smoke that rises and erases the stars
I can see your poets of fields and space
Your forest factories, your rain gods rise
Pan-Americas from utopian Africas, tomb of samba
The newest of Zumbi's quilombo (a village created by escaped slaves)
And the new baianos “promenade” thru your garoa (a kind of rain typical from São Paulo, that doesn't really fall almost like a very wet and windy mist)
And the new baianos can enjoy you leisurely