Touching the fringes of the perpetual fog, two pinnacles rise like the white arms of a pleading city. The staircase is filled with the vague of continuous prayers, delivered to an omnipresent maternity in the whispers exhaled by the hope of another age. A sacred enclosure allows itself to be invaded by the profanity that arrives from the street, below, where the carreiros patiently await the completion of the season. The view is tinted green, revealing the layout of the chilly sidewalks in the intimate cartography of what remains. At Monte, the sky is touched without the illusion of being able to be grasped. Inside the Church, stored in a silver canopy, the patroness of Madeira and of the city disguises her greatness in the confinement of her tiny image. It is said that she appeared in a vision to a shepherdess, a voiceless child, small and silent as herself. The history of the people of Funchal, however, escaped the minority of a childish dependency to achieve the character of an emancipation that is renewed at each encounter – a faith that is built without addictions, in the affection of a common life. An immense feeling that does not need any space – nor does the small and silent image of a mother. The ability to be a source of courage in tribulation surpassed the limits of her stature: She became a point of convergence, a presence in the dark chamber of uncertainty. The bells ring (and so the wings of half a dozen pigeons are released). The day falls into the sea with one last kiss to the uncertain silhouette of Pico de São Martinho. At Monte, between Heaven and Earth, tomorrows are sown.
