Para Pedro

Quando toca o laranja o azul dos tecidos

da cama e o bege das cortinas e o marrom dos cabelos

meus, desperto-me sem cerimônias e abraço

sem repugnância o corpo forte da aurora.

Vem o sol e aquece a pele e ilumina o caminho

e acende o sorriso que quero para mim.

E me diz a verdade, e me conta segredos,

e me abre cancelas que jamais antes vira

eu, que, preso no mundo, vivia liberto

em meu quarto diminuto. E quando vem

a luz mostrando a paleta dos olhos e das faces

e dos corpos que, nus, se recusam a perpetuar

a espécie, e das mãos que, por serem iguais

buscam tímidas o conforto de ambas, e dos pés

que, grandes como pontes, atravessam os rios

e destroem os fios tênues que tentam em vão

separar o real da ilusão amarga. E não perguntem

onde estava Deus, pois a resposta é incerta

e os olhares pecam e eles tem medo da retaliação.

Mas não há porta aberta, e dos altos das janelas

apenas os pássaros, que nada entendem, os olham

cantando árias e pequenas canções de amor.

Não culpem o espelho, seu reflexo era apenas

uma das fatalidades do sexo, que, fortuitamente

resolveu conspirar para que os abraços os fizessem

tornar-se em um corpo só. Sob o sol, sempre sós

somos nós, cegos nós, como o amor. Sob o sol,

vejo o sol, quero o sol, ardo o sol, sempre só

Com o azul dos tecidos e o marrom dos cabelos

e a paleta do olhar e os lábios vermelhos

e olhar no espelho e os dois eus sem medo

e o amor no olhar que ao meu é espelho

porque entre mim e mim mesmo inexiste

qualquer ponte, distância ou barreira

pois nós somos e seremos um só.

Um Pedro de cada lado

do espelho.

Aos jovens de Buenos Aires

Talvez seja pelo frio cortante

que entra por entre os poros de minhas roupas

ou talvez seja pela visão saudosa

desse porto ancorado cuidadosamente

sobre a pele desse mar doce.

Ou talvez seja ainda pela idade desses prédios

ou pela história dessas vias

ou pela alma dos monumentos.

Talvez seja pela resignação daqueles homens

que dormem ao relento junto ao frio

dessas memórias.

Ou talvez seja por causa dos adolescentes lindos

que saem pela cidade como se

a vida fosse hoje, e não existisse mentira no efêmero.

Talvez seja pela vida que eu esteja exasperado

sob o sol, extático frente a esse horizonte que arrebata

esse vento que fustiga e essa terra que verdeja.

Talvez pela música que escuto que melancolicamente

posso entrever na penumbra do futuro

uma gigantesca irrealidade.

Seriam inverdades meus sorrisos de ontem?

Seriam enredos inventados meus amores que vivi?

E de onde segue a vida, que abunda para os belos jovens?

Meninos e meninas, não como eu, sem deslumbre

apenas com a simplicidade que lhes dá a manhã

que vem depois da outra manhã

que por sua vez vem depois da madrugada.

Sejam abençoados esses jovens que vivem,

esses jovens que querem, esses jovens que não pensam!

Sejam! Esvoacem matreiros pelas folhagens das praças

e pelas vitrines das lojas, e pelas mesas dos cafés!

Suplico-lhes tristemente, ensinem-me a ver

além de meus pensamentos inúteis de dúvida

quanto a tudo, beijem-me pelas esquinas ensolaradas

e me deem a felicidade de esquecer em que ano estamos

e quantos anos faltam para o futuro chegar.

Matem-me sem despedidas, concebam-me desesperados

cometam só mais um pecado e descansem,

comprem uma coca-cola, e um pancho

e um sorvete, e deitem no gramado e esqueçam os livros

de nada eles valem... Saiam de casa sem hora

pra voltar, levem-me com vocês, vocês são incríveis

mas não tem a cura para minha doença que me putrefaz.

Ainda assim, jovens maravilhosos, me mostrem

o caminho que percorrem sem mapa rumo ao ponto

onde todas as verdades sorriem e todas as vaidades se cumprem

sem que a boca do mundo como ele realmente é

estraçalhe nossos ossos sem misericórdia.

Free yourself

You may smile in the midst

of the grim sky of the mornings

in July, when the clouds get hungry

and eat and puke over us mortals,

Dearest, but you may not hide

from the twisted mouth of my

insatiable and vivid damn memoirs.

You may even giggle histerically,

Dearest, but you cannot find

your long-ago searched way out.

Free yourself. Weep a little. Yell.

Jump from scrapers. Cut wrists.

Yours own or anyone you hate's.

Write a poem, sing a song, kiss a gay.

Date a junkie. Get yourself an awful

lot of horny, animal sex from him.

Come to see me when you remember

something from the good times, not

so old, go to parties where I'm at.

Get yourself a little quality time

for that good-old sting right into

that dried heart you hide down there.

Talk about flowers or politics,

or, even better, don't you dare to talk

at all. I don't want to hear your voice.

Not even your blue, deep, cloudy

little pair of eyes will make me

lose my track, that path you opened

before me. Morning's grim, coffee's

cold, rain is warm in the tropics,

you are stiff as a brick and shallow

as a puddle of cried tears over that

old pillow you kept from childhood.

Smoke something illegal, go out-of-

law, zeroing that exam right after that.

You know what? Do whatever you

want to do, Dearest, and leave me alone

with my wee glimpses of this so-called future.

Obituary for an explorer

Drowned so deeply into chords

of a piano and philharmonic rain

and thunder drums, and dripping pipes, he goes

wandering through the city,

watching people's lives

while they do chores and cry

and work and sigh and fuck and die

and kill cockroaches and eat roast beef

and empty their faces from any expression

while he goes somewhere heading skyline

where everything ends, but it's fine

for the evening clouds and the police lights

shall protect those who carry weak spirits

and suddenly, 'round the corner

a ridiculously worldly dead end 

stands up like a noble grandfather.

Skyline

Skyscrapers jumping upwards

towards the seven skies, dyed

in grey, wearing pin-stripes

and blackberries harvested

in the deep jungle of people and paper.

The Thirty of April

Aqueous, pluvious, tedious Thursday,

you, growing undesired herbs

over the sandy ashes

of Christopher the Founder

made April everlasting.

Cloudy, bluesy, moody Thursday,

don't you dare bringing back

my aprilian anguish.

Killer, dreamer, softer Thursday,

fastpace and leave my month

quickmove and go away

suicide and show my May.

Minorchord in my ears

a sweet blue little lullaby

while blueing my sun and

graying my sand and

rustycoppering my sea.

Blueish, grayish, saddish Thursday,

die away.

Thou art my summertime jazzy tune

bringing alone thy trombones and

thy trumpets out of a tired-till-death

20th century to coöperate with

Peter A. Gilmore's frustrated desires

of a slow beginning of a fifth month.

Ta. Ta-ta. Ta-ta. Ta-ta. Summertime—

bring me an oxymoron in a box.

Gris nimbus, shine on.

Translucidreaming an Ellington

and a Coltrane and an Eliot.

A verse and ten notes and a scale and a stanza.

Voyez, here's my cool extravaganza.

Recycled sheets wrap some words in a bin

while I cannot know whether it's already May.

May I take your order, sir?

said he, the faceless man in a sloppy suit.

A café crème for Ernest

while I scrabble the moleskine.

A café crème it is.

Double-breasted, I think to myself

though I couldn't comprehend why.

Oh and a brownie, with almonds,

have you macadamias?

I'm afraid not, I beg your pardon.

Then cocoa and almonds.

There were those well-known aprilian clouds

coming out of the hot café crème.

The moleskine closes himself

and the newspaper gets into my hand.

Can't believe the soviets got there first.

Cocoa and almonds, sir.

The coffee clouds outside begin to liquefy.

I appreciate it.

My neighbor, Mr. Schrödinger,

has this cat, its name is Brás Cubas.

It's Brás Cubas who wakes me up in the morning.

It's a crier. Everyday, at 5, it cries.

Out loud. As if its life was being taken 

away along with its heart, lung or liver.

Never saw its lit eyes, or Mr. Schrödinger's,

for they never leave the house.

So can't it extinguish nobody's curse entirely,

the isolation, i mean? I asked Mr. Shrödinger 

through the door. He didn't answer my question

and Brás Cubas kept on waking me up.

Evey single day.

Nonetheless, I'd rather wander

through the city, 'round the streets

stalking people I don't know,

getting lost and found and lost again.

And poetry, that's the actual freedom of mind.

Yesterday I saw a lady in her mid-40s,

she had the voice of a hummingbird,

and dressed like a gypsy, walking nowhere,

she asked people speak English?, and if they did

she would foresee their fortune, or misery,

with enigmatic words and fake looks.

But I wanted to know what she knew.

Yes, I do speak English.

Eh well well mista, I will reed yo fate.

Please do it.

I see dark. And I see a finish line.

You a crossin' dat line, but you not win.

What does that mean?

Don ask questions! The gods a merciful!

And by that point I thought she was a lunatic.

But wait. I see.

Her looks were now transfigures into stone.

You have very deep secret, mista.

I know, I know!

And you willin' to say it to yo freind,

a woman, is dat?

She love you indeed, but don show.

And you tink you big poet

and writa, I know!

But you will not be recognised,

not until the end of April, mista.

And be carefulla of the ones who

might know yo secret, it could be bad fo you.

Oh, I see.

And now you owe me a nickel.

I walked away, she didn't know a thing.

O silver clouds of April!

I hail to thee!

Thy heavy waves of falling eyelids

ooze from the smokey cafés

and the untidy beds

and the whiskey-drinkers

and the jazz standards.

O opaque beauty of April skies

and thy precipitation,

come flood these eyes

which no longer see or read.

O April the neverending

the sadist the cruelest

the saddest of the Twelve

the ironic the bully

O die away,

April skies, April clouds,

April chords!

Are you ok, sir?

Sir, are you fine?

Mr. Vímara Peres, 

do you feel good?

I'm bringing you tea, sir.

Where am I?

Here's the pill, sir.

Where the hell am I?

Have I dreamed?

Sir, swallow it.

Have I had hallucinations?

Do not spit it, sir, please.

What day is it today?

C'est l'11 Floréal, monsieur.

Open the curtains! Please open!

The usual closed April skies.

So this is not a dream at all?

Calm down, Mr. Vímara Peres,

April is almost over.

When Brás Cubas woke me,

I was drowned in a puddle of not-so-quiet feelings.

Dreams had been rough.

Nevertheless, I got on my feet

and dressed my robe down the staircase.

Goodmorninged all my thirty wives,

fis la toilette, put on the suit,

not as as sloppy as the one from the café crème gentleman

and went out the street.

A café crème for Ernest, I have said, 

and double-breasted vanished across the aisle.

Moleskine during coffee,

my coffee was Brazilian, I was told.

The lightning silently shooshed

outside the glass, I spilled coffee

on the corner of the paper.

On the corner of the café, a man,

double-breasted said he called himself Hans,

ordered a cup of coffee. Pure.

I didn't feel sympathy for him,

I went away, but took a glimpse

of the pyramid he drew on the napkin

with a closed eye over it.

I despised it and escaped,

Hans had never been there before.

But Hans followed me to Rue de Spleen,

where I lived, where I was just a foreigner,

who loved the clouds that passed.

And he knocked on Mr. Schrödinger's door, 

whom I had never met, but I couldn't see him,

though I could hear them chatting precisely 

and monotonously in German.

I can't understand German, you know,

one day I will. Perhaps.

Didn't invite me to the house, so I stood outside,

with my scrabbled moleskine,

underneath the falling sparks

of aprilian water.

Honey, say the Thirty in a chorus,

dinner is on the table, hurry,

we are running out of rhubarb!

Rhubarb. Rhubarb.

The Thirty wanted me to have rhubarb.

Thake that rhubarb, you Thirty,

and put it up your past.

Poema soturno

Carrego em meu ventre

um filho morto.

Espero seu choro seco

sabendo que não virá.

Meus olhos estão secos:

não choro.

Apenas espero a dor

do parto inútil.

E o amor não vem.

E meu sentir é defunto.

Às vezes arrependo-me profundamente

de ter escolhido a verdade.

Consola-me a perspectiva de que

em um dia fortuito

tudo virará mentira.

Carrego a morte que cresce

em meu ventre encharcado de vida.

Carrego a simples verdade

de que tudo será mentira.

E tudo não mais será.

Mas antes meu filho nascerá.

Morto.