Each day, a page. Each page, a moon. Each moon, Álamo.

Poem-flower-and-flowers

it was lucky to have found the end of the island.
contrary still today we would think the sea
was an illness blue or grayish where each ship
is just a visitor.
no one asks what lays beyond the rocks
and i-who have seen waves relishing our rocks-
made a quiet promise to take pills
on the sly.
i remember crossing the island’s barbed wire.
but out there the men also lived within barbed
wire and worse than ours for it kills more than
an insecticide
besides the men out there forget easily
and they don’t have the islander’s matrix of living with
clasped hands in order to float.
(when I thought that nothing was worthwhile
i decided
to write mounds of words only to close them within the
limited circuit of the island).
planes fly above and speak of the bigger world
they compress their wings of steel and stay within us for
a few instants. in each one i look for images—images
that never become deceased for they always behold
an enormous will to live
in the core
of each of my pours i meditate within a premature
silence of words that fled from me in nights
of fervor. asceticism
came to me on a day of empty promises.
admire the crazy and the devils. i scribble myself swiftly.
throw at me bunches of chrysanthemums. it’s simpler.

Farmer’s Prayer

Lord-fantastic-deaf-mute!
-look over the husks that grows in our eyes
and over the stomach of the children born
from our nights of insomnia.

-look over our yearly pig
the pregnant cow out of season
the wind enating from your bad humor.
-look over Joaquim
who bought three small fish
for his seven children.
-look over aunt Chica’s well
that quenches the thirst of the harvest
and makes us believe in your fantasy.
-look over the city which is far
with its neckties and it’s neon lights
may it not crush us lord
with its trucks of taxes. amen.

Song of resignation

we all started eating bread with sugar
in our land plowed by worms.
we are farmers of poor luck.
on the island we glorify the corn bread,
our eyes travel on Sundays at mass
because we only believe in the god of the churches
that smells of rotten flowers of sweat of mildew
and tastes like fleas with incense.
we wear denim that comes from america
as handouts and by emigrant tradition.
we walk barefoot.
god and the island know that we walk barefoot
in the purity of our winter
that takes the effort of our summer.
moreover, the island has hands that drown.

From the book Through the Walls of Solitude (translations by Diniz Borges)