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| António Carlos Cortez |  |
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| the santa luzia belvedere. it was the time of perfect similarities. clad in lights like a boat that was turning into a bird a snake. i don’t know how to return to that near poisonous taste, now that we are foreign strangers in the city emptied of the sea and the salt. what is the point of this poem if nothing from the boats lingers on the tongue? you will know how sword-like can be the verses launched on the distant avenues of memory. you will know of gardens where mystery is a statue of inaccessible secrets liquid as lips of silence and crystal you will know of the body aged like leaves rustling in the words dangerous as stars you don’t know what it’s like to return here: scene of the crime you don’t know what it’s like to return here: to return here: scene of blood you don’t know what it’s like to return here to the hills where the sun spreads and cools to return here like a boat on the river without any sails other than the plan of the voyages engulfed by the need to return here with the need to strangle through poems the city that surrounds me. from Um Barco no Rio [A Boat on the River] |
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| b. 1976 Portugal | ||||||||||||||||
| © Instituto Camões, 2007 | ||||||||||||||||