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.