Requiem        

Here I am, waiting for the silence.

Before the rotten shipyard

I catch only a glimpse of the flotsam

left over from the illumination.

Like all leftovers, it bears the mark

of things hidden forever

or of those interred at the top of the dunes;

like the letters branded in fire

on the flank of a horse stolen by a gipsy, or

        abirthmark

on a much-beloved hip.

Now, night descends for good.

My weary gaze follows the canoe

moving away from the mangroves.

A light in the salt marsh. A crab in the mud.

And life evaporates like the souls

in a heaven that doesn’t shelter a single god.

Every landscape I saw has crumbled

into corroded postcards. And a dirty fingernail, dressed in black,

takes the place of an ancient hand. The endless doors

of the docks that stored braided onions and sacks of sugar

shrink in the darkness, reduced to a single door,

refractory to the dazzling clarity of daybreak.

At the Sand Bar of Saint Miguel, facing the sea,

only now I have understood:

the longest day of a man

lasts less than a bolt of lightning.

The hours will no longer be celebrated

among the constellations.

Sky and earth will disappear

in the ashes born out of the coming

days and nights stolen by death.

And everything I loved, dissolves.

The scarlet cloud softly lands

between the stucco huts and the wave-torn sea.

The time has come to say goodbye to the dark water

that roars in the darkness of the lagoon,

and to the planetary wind that dries the fish

hanging from the poles of the thatched huts,

and to the virgin forest descending to the sea

along the steep coastline of my lost homeland.

Eternity passes like the wind.

Only time is eternal. I’ve always been here

amid my decimated people,

and beyond the dunes my hands made

the golden anthropophagical bonfire

of the awesome feast. A night of ashes

now follows the clamor and the joy.

The sea douses all the shipwrecks

and every fire quenches itself, the whole golden fire

scatters and dies down into the silence of the world.

Here, in the water and earth of my continual births,

my shadow roams through the wrecks

of ships lost or dreamt.

And I search in vain the transgressed waters

for the chastity of the clear and intact water

that emerges fromthe sea at the break of dawn

in the heart of the muted night.

Oh! gate promised as life’s comfort,

after such filth and such splendour!

In this final night, the heavenly bonfires

burn up all hope and bury in ash

the foolish dreams of earthly souls

and the death rattle that suppresses any paradise.

In the crematory-night, death is a bonfire.

II        

Beyond the cold and heat

and the impetuous cockroaches that spread likepetals

in the abandoned granary

and the funeral bells in the morning ofchildhood

and the swinging lights of the trucks slowlycrossing the cane fields

scaring away the raccoons,

and beyond the baskets open like corollas

in order to collect the remains of the daymutilated by hates and wars,

and far from the fallen nests on the winterground

and the waters of the unyielding rains thatsuddenly disappear

on the great tableof the primordial sea

and the feathery crystal-clear moons that rulethe passage of the mullets,

there is a nowhere which dispenses with beggingand hope

and frightens off solemnity and reverence.

Beyond the dreams visited by the restless sea

and the fetid dark of the cesspool and thesolar clarity

where bewildered we move

like flies made dizzy by the swelter of summer,

a non-space waits for us. The day

crawls in hours that open to the landscape likewindows.

The noise of the world reaches the shore

and encircles the salt flats, the treacherousreefs of shellfish,

and lagoons ofsugar.

Beyond reality, there are other realities

that unfold like rungs. Our steps

climb up and down the ladder in the miserableday,

in the gentle night.

They are like dreams that are tributaries ofother dreams

or open windows to the sea.

We don’t know where we are. We don’t know whatwe are.

We know nothing but the existence of a night

pure and empty, waiting for us. An untouchablenight

beyond fire and ice and any hope.

With its sinister hand, death crushes

our dazzling insect dreams,

and pours the purity of the water inside thevase

as the flower’s fragmented promised disaster.

Death, always death, bugging us

with the buzzing of a funeral fly.

III        

I’ve always loved daybreak. The prow of theship,

the clarity that moves forward between thesparse shadows,

the lingering murmur of life in the trainstations.

A bonfire of words breaks out in the square.

A black fjord of a train crosses the city.

Day spills the syllables of the world onto thesidewalks.

I’ve always loved the thunder that tears theafternoon apart,

the rust and the rain, love that ends

and the smoke that rises from screeching tires.

The idiotic days pass like bridges.

Statues fly like birds.

The tightest doors open like lips.

I’ve always loved what passes by: crowdedtaxis,

the whistles of trains, stray clouds

and the leaves dragged by the wind.

Hail punishes the pyramids of death.

The brothel’s door cracks in the sultry weather.

A yellow sunset enfolds the shipyard.

I’ve always loved junk, the form destroyed

by time, rank as a tidal pool.

I’ve always loved the weevil hidden in thesilos.

IV        

The lights of the airport hurry likeharlequins.

At the railroad crossings, the whistlingfreight trains

carry mannequins to supply our dreams.

And I am the one that departs. And stays. Andflies. And remains.

A beam of a lighthouse divides the universe.

My hand hunts in the dark for a nuptial body.

I lick the secretive salt of the barely openedshells.

The lingering silence between roots and lianas

opens a solar path in an aqueduct.

Sultry weather sustains the clarity.

Day is a shattered lightning bolt.

A shadowy cone eclipses me from myself.

And the day passes like an ant. The days pass

like the breeze in unfurled sails.

The days pass and always bring death.

I say goodbye to myself in the vespertide ofdarkness.

And now the night descends. With it, the lostcause.

My hand no longer touches the beloved’s body.

A dark sun illuminates the night of my soul

but I want the other sun, the great clarity

of the solid day opening like a door.

I only feel complete with my shadow

and the mask of everything I ceased being.

My uninhabitable sun rises in any horizon.

Only to the wind that blows do I trust myamazement.

I need to be exact and impenetrable

so I can be understood by the passing day.

The flight of the falcon accompanies my steps

towards life, towards death,

under the indifference of an imperishable sky.

I see death hidden in a sunbeam:

the remains of the afterglow, the nest of nobird

and abolition of flight over any plateau.

V        

Happy are those who depart.

Not the ones who reach the rotten ports.

Happy those who depart and never come back.

For I stay always half way

and my journey remains unfinished.

Happy are those who don’t know the finalstation.

Happy those who disappear in the fog,

those who open windows at dawn,

those who light the lights of the airfields.

Happy are those who cross the bridges

when the afternoon lands among the refinerieslike a bird.

Happy those who possess an inattentive soul.

Happy are those who know that, at the end ofthe passage,

Nothing awaits them, like a scarecrow in a cornfield.

Happy those who only find themselves whenwindborne or lost.

Happy are those who have lived more than onelife.

Happy are those who have lived countless lives.

Happy those who vanish when circuses pull uptheir tents.

Happy those who know that each fountain is asecret.

Happy are those who love storms.

Happy those who dream of illuminated trains.

Happy those who loved bodies and not souls,

who heard the hoot of white owls in the silenceof the night.

Happy are those who found a lost syllable inthe dew of the grass.

Happy those who crossed the obscure night andthe untimely fog,

who saw the crackling fire dancing in the bigbonfires of June,

happy those who watched the sky open like analtar cloth

to welcome theflight of the falcon.

Happy those who live on the outlying islands

and are surrounded at nightfall by a cloud ofleaf-cutter ants.

Happy those who just sat around and then oneday left.

VI        

Words follow me like dogs

when I walk among the constellations.

I rise like the day, and I die at nightfall.

I am reborn from myself and to myself I return

with the promise of another dawn.

In the circle of time, I pass on and I stay.

I dawn and grow dark among the galaxies

and between two suns I drink my eternity.

Added or divided, always I multiply myself

when the constellations fly in the sky likebirds

and the truth of the world is stored in thehold of the ships.

I am the wind that blows in Maceió

and the mullet imprisioned in the fishtrap ofthe sea.

Night is a door that closes

when I pass. Day is a shipmaster’s atlas.

Before sleep and the dream, I sip the silenceof the mountains

and cross the border where death is hiding

like a fox in the forest.

Along the way, I’ve always listened to

the endless sea’s murmuring of syllables.

At cold’s eve and at the end of mystery,

I search once again for the rigging of theshipyard

and I can’t even find my own shadow

sucked up by the clouds of the crimson sunset.

The sea advances like a sword.

For this journey I bring nothing

but what’s left of me,

the wreck that verifies my shipwreck.

I walked in the crowd. I listened to the noisesof the world

in the voice of the demagogue, in the boomingreggae, in the cry of the street peddler,

                                                inthe turbines of a jetplane, in the cursing

of the impatientpoor at a bus stop, in the whisper

                                                oflove that clears the darkness,

in the flashing rain.

I talked with the stone and I came to know

its silence and thickness; and a tree of foam

blossomed for me in the brightness of morning.

I watched the wind blow in the lagoons

and circle the misery of the world.

Like a lumberjack, I ended my day and waitedfor night.

Night came and blunted the axe that leanedagainst the wall,

and the woodpile stayed in the shed untiltransformed into fragrant ash.

I saw the lame horse coming down the hill andneigh under the starlight.

I tried to open the door that is always closed.

I crossed the bridges of the big cities

and breathed love, and drank the universe

and saw the sea once more, a fullness like wineand bread.

I saw the lights of Europe lighting up

as night slowly fell.

I was a man among men, a visage among many,

and now I’m alone.

I was always love itself in the unforgettablebed,

and now my wandering hand only finds darkness

where before there was the beloved body.

A mute ocean surrounds me

and it’s white like a shroud.

And the rain falls and washes

the latrines of death.

VII        

Sea, drums and hammer, music and salt of life,

huge resounding sea, here I am at your side!

Next to the bridge of the shipyard that creaksabove the waves,

I long for the silence of the fish that crossthe fiery red tentacle

of the coralreefs,

for the chasteness of the moon that rises inthe pale sky and for the vigil of the sea

that invites me tobe eternal,

and for the solitude of the sunken ships

that, in crustacean beds, keep the coins lostin the shipwrecks

and the lollingmew of the seagulls.

Everything I said to the foaming tide and tothe radiant seaweed

was erased by the wind that nestled between thewarehouses

and followed the sudden silence of the rainfalling in the estuary

                                    andmoistening the damaged anchors 

                                    ofthe ships that hide in their rusty holds

                                    thecoupled smell of salt

                                    andsugar

and the dark hammering of the waters.

In the shipyard that jibs like a boat

when the dripping branches reach the shoals

where the dreams of men toss in graveyards oflime

and the holy sewers sip the summer rains,

I claim what I’ve lost on the long passage.

Where are the madmen of my childhood,

the madmen that escaped and danced in the asylumdevastated

by the sun?

Where are my ships and the light of thelighthouse?

Next to the waves that die and are reborn,

the eternal return and eternal movement,

once again I call you but you don’t answer.

Now, only in my dreams I see your shadow.

Surely, you have flown like a bird into thedarkness

and you went beyond the sun and the furtivethunder

and the clarity of the water. Like all of thedead

you are now where you are not,

in the nowhere that excludes all hope.

Only death teaches that angels don’t exist.

All that I lost, I lost forever.

VIII        

Day falls in love with itself

like a naked body in a mirror.

Time, composition of the water that flows

in a river of rumors and desires.

Loud cry of being! The blush of dawn

in the highest sky, in clouds that are doors

in the glacial flight

far from fear and horror.

And the whiteness of the world, snow and ice

dawning into white sculptures

at a height without vertigo.

Under the dawn-white precipice of the clouds

the earth holds our destitution.

And an insolent death follows the footsteps

of men that walk beneath the sun

toward the supreme night, toward the unrulysea.

We are not in a hurry to die, yet neverthelesswe die

in the hurtling day.

And here I am, placid as the water of thecisterns.

And death is an impatient dawn,

and bursts from the wide open sky

towards the roaring dream of life.

I always lacked wisdom.

Throughout my life, I have learned little,

and now, before the exact and visible ocean,before the great prosodic sea

I know nothing about the passage.

After so many trips, this is the final frontier

that I have to overcome.

The boat without a boatman rocks on the slimywater.

And I am the dark mud full of miasmas

that supports the pile dwellings of misery anddeath.

I only got to know the endless rain

and that wind which drags the wind itself

in the delirious day, in the glowering night.

I watched the tide moving forward in thepeninsula

and the sea coming to meet me like aninvitation,

the feminine sea that fondled my feet.

There is a knowledge that escapes my footsteps

even when I step on the rotten boards of theshipyard

and look into my shadow for the prow of ships.

Time is the lord of truth and of the lie.                                                 

I say goodbye to the sultry weather. It’s timefor the arrival

of that migratory bird that only shows up inwinter

and disturbs the sedentary world with itsstrident scream.

Oh clarity, farewell! I bid adieu to the sun,

to the incomparable sea and the untimely night.

I have lived without learning that everythingis loss and passage

and that the breakers erase the names of theships

and take to the offing the rumble of life.

Now the silence of the world seals my soul.

The rosy ray of the rosy sunrise

points to the dark night.

Separated from myself by death,

that shell that doesn’t stow away the noise ofthe sea,

it’s here in the dark mud of the salt marsh

that my long road between two nothings ends.