Álamo Oliveira’s poem reads like a meditation on poetry itself—its rituals, its illusions, and its dangers. Framed in the language of ceremony, the act of writing becomes almost sacred: “candelabras of lit rhythms,” “muses and ancient poets,” a priestly figure tending to the text as if it were an altar. Yet this reverence is not without tension. Oliveira exposes the theatricality embedded in literary tradition, suggesting that poetry can become overburdened by its own rituals, its inherited gestures, its desire to sanctify what may, at its core, resist such formalization.

At the same time, the poem pushes against this excess. The striking final line—“it isn’t liturgical to circumcise the poem”—feels like both a provocation and a liberation. It suggests that poetry cannot be reduced, purified, or disciplined into a single meaning or form. Instead, it must remain open, raw, and perhaps even unruly. Oliveira invites us to reconsider what a poem is—not as a perfected object, but as an ongoing act, one that lives between tradition and rupture, between invocation and resistance.

On this World Poetry Day, we invite you into this reflection. How do you read this vision of poetry and its rituals? Do you see poetry as ceremony, rebellion, or something in between? Share your thoughts with us and join this cultural dialogue around poetry and the enduring work of Álamo Oliveira.