As Gaivotas de Veritas

à Diana e Julián, por ocasião da visita à Ilha das Berlengas

Falo-te com as partes musicais da mente

Não ouças com a linguagem detem-te
Detem-te detem-te
Detem-te

Que levas deste mundo com a mentira
Que levas daqui a mais com a falsidade
Com qualquer idade que daqui te vás
O que nos deixas

De que te queixas
Que imagem vês no espelho de Veritas
Quem aquilo e aqueloutro te fez te faz
De onde te vem a própria pena

        Que gaivota não estás vendo

                Implorando biscoito como quase morta
                            Apenas para não o dares a outra

A Glimpse of a Goddess

On his way to our world, Mercury forgot to close the door behind him.

There, in that corner, I see her. Smoking a cigarette the way life itself goes up in smoke. Seated, solemn, her legs crossed more firmly than Christendom crossed swords with the Moors. More icon than creed, more certainty than icon: a fact.

I'm addressing you, perfect woman, whose name eludes us, for it is more ancient than the Greek gods themselves.

Why express my soul to you in Portuguese when a Portuguese soul has already been laid bare in Maritime Ode by Pessoa, so exposed that he signed it Álvaro de Campos?

A language had to be chosen, one understood by more than one person. What am I speaking to you of? The obvious. What is it that all of us speak of, even while denying it, even while baring our teeth at its absence?

I was advised that love is within us, that there is no point in seeking it in another unless it first exists within ourselves. Yet my dog tells me otherwise. In greeting, that opposite of longing, he shows me that it is through my touch that he exists; and only in that physical reflection does he become, does he love, does he lick, does he curl up in his bed.

Oscar Wilde had already distilled it in his poetic prose, giving voice to the crystal water in which Narcissus became drunk on himself. Without that other, Narcissus would never have seen himself reflected. Did he love himself? He loved his reflection. And drunk alone is no different from dead.

Without you, what would become of me? Perhaps I would never even know the self existed. Without the silent, eerie, lonely, foolish aitch of Hexistence, I would be reduced to mere esitation.

And if you are listening to me, you are not truly listening. You are treating my words as afternoon tea.

At the end of yet another shrub of green words—for what colour are words if not green?—, I expose myself and scarcely expose myself at all, waiting for your sharp, blinding scissors to prune me.

A Letter to Ella

(Ella: “she” in Spanish, Asturian, Leonese, Aragonese, Catalan, and Old Portuguese)

I played with the baby version of you. She was seated on her grandmother’s living-room carpet. A watchful German Shepherd lay next to her. Her grandmother was preparing snacks in the kitchen. I set up a pile of play-cubes, and she tore them down with glee and joy, again and again.

I hereby submit to you another pile of play-cubes for you to tear down joyfully:

To Beat The Beatles

A soaring seagull told me you are into The Beatles, those beetles of beat.
Their arched begging eyes trigger motherly love.
They need to be cared for to regain a more joyful expression.
Behind their eyes they were children just like the rest of us.
They explored the world around them and found music.
And drugs.
They stumbled upon success, too much for a regular human critter.
They wrote as they saw the world at that time.
They wrote what they wished for or dreamed or hallucinated.
After them, many children listened and grew up to their music.
They mixed those musical grains of sand into their playground’s sandbox.
They are musicians now, making their own music and writing their own lyrics.
They are the present.
The beat of The Beatles is the past.
Comedians have a way of finding grains of truth to sell as laughter.
Woody Allen, a child with his own problems, like all of us, found one.
He explored it in the film Midnight in Paris.
If we travel to a beloved past we encounter people in love with an even more ancient past.
Time-travel machines are not a reality.
Not yet, though.
You are the present.
Are you among us?
If not, where is She?


Your Seagullese grand-uncle,
António

Poça de Lama

Este meu amor ninguém queria
É chuva permeando Inverno
Caiu natural nuvem saturada

Solo não mais a bebia

Ela vivendo sua Primavera
Percebi enfim universo paralelo
Simultâneo no mesmo planeta

É uma treta

Não é treta

Aguardemos pelo Estio

Quebra-Cabeças

para Cristina Borş
Santarém, 29 de agosto de 2026 – último dia no Rei

Como um puzzle, cada peça que me vais dando sobre ti
encaixa nalgumas outras entrelaçadas entre si
ou fica à parte aguardando seu tempo terno de encaixe.

Quando abri a caixa que te continha despedaçada
não vi a imagem do teu puzzle; estava perdida.
Logo, encaixo da melhor maneira que o acho.

No canto direito surgiu uma borboleta,
mas não encontro peça que se ajuste ao topo.
Suspeito que a borboleta esteja incompleta.

Pensei em apresentar reclamação aos fabricantes
até que o manual de instruções me elucidou:
«Foi opção, é um puzzle que ainda não se acabou.»

Examinei de novo a tampa da caixa do teu puzzle,
faltava o número exacto de quantas peças continha.
Foi por um triz, pois ia montar-te numa mesinha.

Feliz por ter encontrado puzzle interminável,
deixo-te esta nota futura e biográfica por aqui:
“O Rei está morto – Vida longa à Zely!”

Music and Chaos

for J.S. Porter

I fall at the feet of the king, my lord, my Sun, seven times and seven times.

A recurrent greeting in the Amarna tablets, written in cuneiform and addressed to the Pharaoh of Egypt.

Inside.
Our mother's heartbeat in the womb.
Her body vibrating voicing words.
The swashing liquid sounds when she moves.
Muffled sounds from outside.

Our first memories of rhythm: unreachable, formative.
Forgotten, moving us unaware.

Outside.
Wind, crackling fire, a branch snapping in the forest.
Birdsong, the howling wolf, the squawk-screech-cackle-cry-yelp of seagulls.
Our tribe drumming out fear of the Unknown, the rhythm of stomping feet.
Singing in awe and gratitude, for the world is as fearful as it is beautiful.
It feeds us; it kills us.
We laugh from joy, unease, and fear alike.


Interwoven.
Too many forces shape the World.
We cannot yet comprehend them all; we are one of them.
We call them Chaos because we need names.
Chaos has always shaped everything we know.
The forces that affect us are our gods and nymphs.
They play freely in the Garden of Eden: Terra Mater, Mother Earth.

Casaste com o carteiro

Ainda não sabia, passado trinta e muito ano,
Se tu eras a louca da história ou eu o autista.

Andava, sem o saber, como sempre,

Procurando por uma pista.

Primeiro encontrei, sem o querer,

No fundo dum armário, cada carta

Reclamando do pouco que recebia.

E, de repente, como sempre, sem querer,

Fico a saber qual a sentença:

A rapariga que esperava muito

as cartas do namorado

que lhe escrevia muito pouco

casou-se com o carteiro

                Adília Lopes
                in A pão e a água de colónia, 1987

Bom dia, Mau Dia!

Pela manhã, o céu abrindo,

Intestino cumprindo destino,

O orifício do cú expandindo,

Oh, que alívio, senhor doutor…

Seja a aurora de sol ou neve,

Todo o dia será tão mais leve

Quanto mais a pia nos fede,

E não há dia de merda melhor.

 

O mundo quebra todos e após isso muitos ficam fortes nas partes quebradas. Mas aqueles que não quebram ele mata. Ele mata os muito bons e os muito gentis e os muito valentes imparcialmente. Se tu não és nenhum destes, podes ter a certeza de que ele te matará também mas sem qualquer pressa especial.

Ernest Hemingway, Adeus às Armas

 

Quebrado

 

Sem espelho, já vejo as fissuras na carne

E sinto o lapso eléctrico da ideia,

A memória em retrocesso

E o apetite confundido:

Estou a comer ou a ser comido?

 

Todo o espelho velho tem mancha

“Tem carácter!” diz o optimista,

O pessimista diz “Opacidade!…”

E o do meio diz “Algo mais ia ser dito, mas

Os ursos invadiram esta guerra no meu crânio.”

 

 

 

Autumn comes and some give a shit about it