Self Portrait at Forty

From the book Ballads and Self-Portraits

Translated by Amanda Castro

I wish to tell you of the countless, successive deaths of

My forty years and of the redundancy of the moons and

The palm trees that populate my days and my dusks in Sans Souci

I want to speak --and time becomes a voice in

my throat— of the countless peripeteia, the madness of the

the days changed into fear and I want to speak of the nights like reefs

facing the sea I want to clarify the dissonance of the

repentance of words and the warm air of these

millenary sea weeds

I would like to speak –and I can’t—of the hours in which in

Gloom my bones cry leaning against an almond tree

I would like to tell –and I don’t have the courage— of the years

Transformed into fiction the trees violent of

Dead birds and leafs threatening the limits of

Dreams I could tell you –and I know that I’m lying—that I have

Assisted my fascination with the dark corners of

Blood

I would like to say heliotrope and see ascending from dreams to

Memory like the skies in September the furious sea anemones

that I so much hated it’s much like hell the

memory of those clear incomprehensible days, that

I would –all of a sudden—speak of happiness and have

None –I have lost—your mouth, oh celestial mistletoe

I would like to, I would have to, simply accept how transparent Pain is

when it traverses the days like a bullet in the palate

like the immense skies of the Caribbean