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

Manuel, six times I thought of you

manuel 6 times
I’ve thought of you
manuel
when I thought of you for the first time
you wore a bib of smiles
tied with two uncertain knots
almost always torn and dirty
because your mother didn’t earn enough to buy soap.

when I thought of you for the second time
you were running a suspending butterfly
like an angel in a baroque altar
still naked from prejudices
with shorts of small ideas
without doubts or poisons.
you were the truth of the birds
with a freedom unknown to you.

when I thought of you for the third time
you had chewed the land of corns stocks
suckled with the tip of intelligence
your sweat and the sweat of others
in a chalice patterned from a black rock.
your dreams and wishes were bathed
in a pan-america plane.
you began to feel the island around your neck
like a dog’s collar.

when I thought of you for the fourth time
you were the contrary of the movement.
An enormous sex devoured you manuel;
and your bygone adolescence
was curtailed to your jeans
and in an uninhabited shirt
chewed by loathing rats
until you penetrated margarida
–a flower without thorns.
your bare feet were the picture of your people.

when I thought of you for penultimate time
you were going with margarida of pleasures
in a solemn step of rough molds
and the priest gave you two or three words
that you returned with only one.
then I understood within your eyes the certainty of the scaffold
and it wasn’t easy to see
that the america of your adolescence
was far
so far…that your stretched dreams
wouldn’t get there.
you had in your fingers
the umbilical cord of your marriage.
the island was your bed (and of others)
and you were conscious of being incapable
of deflowering margarida
in your island of parasites and insects;
in your groveling island stuffed with the poor
-of skin and spirit—
like you and like me and like…
like our god turned islander.

when I thought of you for the last time
you had three sons conceived in your eyes
and a withered cluster of hopes
hanging in the shed of your fantasy.
manuel
it’s best not to think
of the sweets that you didn’t eat in your childhood.

From the book: Through the Walls of Solitude-a collection of poetry from Álamo Oliveira, translated by Diniz Borges.