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I didn’t kill any companions.

If I didn’t make a noisy exit,

if I just stayed on and on and on,

I had no ulterior motive.

They left me here, that’s all.

One by one they went away,

without warning, without waving at me,

without saying farewell, they disappeared.

(Some were veritable masters of silence.)

I’m not complaining. Nor do I reproach them.

It surely wasn’t their intention

to leave me all on my own,

at a loss,

defenseless.

They didn’t realize that one man would remain.

That’s how I turned into — or they turned me into—

a remainder, a leftover.

If it amazes you that I’m still living,

let me clarify: I’m just outliving.

I never really lived except

in plans and projects. Postponements.

Next year’s calendar.

I never saw the point of living

when so many around me lived so much!

Sometimes I envied them. Sometimes I felt sorry

to see so much life used up by living

when not-living, outliving,

is what endured.

And I stood in a corner,

simply and inconsistently

waiting for my turn

to live.

It never came. Cross my heart. There were rehearsals,

trial runs, illustrations, that’s all. Real life

smiled from afar, inscrutable.

I gave up. I withdrew

more and more, like a shellfish into its shell. Now

I’m a survivor.

A survivor is more disconcerting

than a ghost. I know: I disconcert myself.

One’s own reflection is a ruthless accuser.

However much I hide from the world, I project

my own person, who looks back and taunts me.

It’s useless to threaten him. He always returns,

every morning I return, I come back to me

with the regularity of a postman bringing bad news.

Every single day

confirms the strange phenomenon that’s me.

My roots and my path

are not where I am,

where I’ve ended up,

a persistent, redundant, nagging

survivor

of the life I still haven’t

lived, I swear to God and the Devil, I never lived.

Now that I’ve confessed, what will be

my punishment, or my pardon?

My hunch is nothing can be done

for or against me.

How to do or undo

the undoable not-done?

If I’m a survivor, I’m a survivor.

You have to allow me at least

this quality. I’m the only one, you see,

of a very old group

unremembered on the streets

and in video films.

Only I still linger, sleep,

dine, urinate,

stumble, and even smile

at odd moments, I assure you I smile,

like now, for instance, when I’m smiling

for being (with relish?) a survivor.

I’m just waiting — all right?—

for this time of surviving to end

and for everything to conclude without scandal

in the eyes of indifferent justice.

I’ve just noticed, without surprise,

that you hear but don’t care if you understand me,

nor does it matter that a survivor

has come to present his case, to defend

or accuse himself, it’s all the same

nothing at all, and void.

AMOR E SEU TEMPO

Amor é privilégio de maduros

estendidos na mais estreita cama,

que se torna a mais larga e mais relvosa,

roçando, em cada poro, o céu do corpo.

É isto, amor: o ganho não previsto,

o prêmio subterrâneo e coruscante,

leitura de relâmpago cifrado,

que, decifrado, nada mais existe

valendo a pena e o preço do terrestre,

salvo o minuto de ouro no relógio

minúsculo, vibrando no crepúsculo.

Amor é o que se aprende no limite,

depois de se arquivar toda a ciência

herdada, ouvida. Amor começa tarde.

THE TIME OF LOVE

Love is a privilege of maturity

stretched out on the narrowest bed,

which becomes the widest and grassiest,

arousing, in each pore, the body’s heaven.

This is love: the unexpected gift,

the glittering buried prize unearthed,

the sight of encrypted lightning which,

deciphered, makes only one thing worth

the trouble and price of earthliness:

the minute of gold in the miniature clock,

quivering in the twilight.

Love is what we learn on the brink,

after we’ve archived all our inherited

and acquired science. Love begins late.

PAISAGEM: COMO SE FAZ

Esta paisagem? Não existe. Existe espaço

vacante, a semear

de paisagem retrospectiva.

A presença da serra, das imbaúbas,

das fontes, que presença?

Tudo é mais tarde.

Vinte anos depois, como nos dramas.

Por enquanto o ver não vê; o ver recolhe

fibrilhas de caminho, de horizonte,

e nem percebe que as recolhe

para um dia tecer tapeçarias

que são fotografias

de impercebida terra visitada.

A paisagem vai ser. Agora é um branco

a tingir-se de verde, marrom, cinza,

mas a cor não se prende a superfícies,

não modela. A pedra só é pedra

no amadurecer longínquo.

E a água deste riacho

não molha o corpo nu:

molha mais tarde.

A água é um projeto de viver.

Abrir porteira. Range. Indiferente.

Uma vaca-silêncio. Nem a olho.

Um dia este silêncio-vaca, este ranger

baterão em mim, perfeitos,

existentes de frente,

de costas, de perfil,

tangibilíssimos. Alguém pergunta ao lado:

O que há com você?

E não há nada

senão o som-porteira, a vaca silenciosa.

Paisagem, país

feito de pensamento da paisagem,

na criativa distância espacitempo,

à margem de gravuras, documentos,

quando as coisas existem com violência

mais do que existimos: nos povoam

e nos olham, nos fixam. Contemplados,

submissos, delas somos pasto,

somos a paisagem da paisagem.

HOW TO MAKE A LANDSCAPE

This landscape? It doesn’t exist. What exists

is vacant space, to be planted

with landscape retrospectively.

The view of the mountains, the springs,

the cecropia trees? What view?

That all comes later.

Twenty years later, just like in dramas.

For now our seeing doesn’t see; it gathers

slivers of road, strands of horizon,

without knowing that one day

it will weave them into tapestries,

like photographs,

of visited lands we didn’t grasp.

A landscape takes time. It begins as a blank

space tinted by green, brown, and gray,

but the color doesn’t stick to surfaces,

doesn’t shape them. Stone is only stone

from the distance of much maturing.

And the water from this stream

doesn’t cool naked bodies:

it cools them later.

Water is a project of living.

A gate opens. Creaks. Meaningless.

A cow in its silence. I don’t even notice.