Waters of March -- Same Song, Two Hemispheres

It’s early March. It’s New York. It rained overnight and now it’s getting windy. The baseball games are starting down south.

I found myself humming “Waters of March,” sung by Susannah McCorkle, with her English lyrics:

“It’s the promise of life/ It’s the joy in your heart.”

But wait: when Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote that song, in Portuguese, he was talking about March in Brazil, in the Southern Hemisphere.

I checked with my friend Altenir Silva, film-writer, who lives in Rio, not far from the Tom Jobim statue. Altenir said the Portuguese lyrics mean, “It’s the rest of a bush in the morning light,” and he added, “Yes, March is a rainy month in Brazil.”

Turns out, Jobim was caught in a major rainstorm, in the interior, far from the beaches of Ipanema.

Apparently, McCorkle wrote the English version around 1993, giving it a northern take. She was a linguist, who sang in English, Portuguese and Italian, and a writer, published in magazines and working on a memoir when she committed suicide on May 19, 2001 at the age of 55. Her obituary was lovingly written by Leon Wieseltier in the June 4, 2001, edition of The New Yorker.

McCorkle’s version of “Waters of March,” with terrific guitar backup by Howard Alden, survives her, as recorded music does.

My friend Altenir followed up by sending me a version by Elis Regina, probably the most popular Brazilian pop singer when she died on Jan., 19, 1982, at 36, of an overdose.

This sadness from both hemispheres is diluted by the music they left behind, the music of water, the rush of life, the little things we see and hear and feel, the things we take for granted: -- “a stick, a stone.” “É pau, é pedra.”

McCorkle could have added a stanza about spring training. A bat, a ball, a glove, a cap. 

“It’s the promise of life/ It’s the joy in your heart.”