sexta-feira, 6 de maio de 2011





Pallor of a Black Label

Not even Johnnie Walker Black Label can save me from the awareness of this,
The place where I sit, has not the slightest sense, the slightest reason to remain.
I awake, and it is just one more day to carry to the end, defeated.
I do not even feel the cobblestone, broken by time, by my feet of other times,
Knocking, the knocking on windows that are half-open, and people snoring in their two in the morning slumber.

Two in the morning slumber, come two in the morning, and still they won’t wake up.
Coffins close. Slumber goes on, and only the snoring ceases.
Damn, that only the dogs have a voice at this hour! Only the cobblestone responds answers to questions I did not ask.
Only the stars with their faraway light, give me another shy and unwilling step.
It hurts me, it hurts, this weight of everything I’ve left for an illusion,

That I knew beforehand was a mistake, and a brave blindness of nostalgia, and in the end…
An insomnia that is paid with years of living every minute that passes,
That is palpable, in echoes that drive crowds mad, with every tic of the black Swatch purchased in Zurich on the wake of farewell. Farewell!
This will never be real, not this conscious life. Come what may, it may affect the body as well,
But let it come! I could have seasoned nights at the end of the world, in a life of hell, that isn’t even headed for that either,
And nobody will see. Nobody will feel. Only I walk on, bag over back, so heavy that,
Even the wine has not yet fermented. They want to sleep, but they are already asleep,
Since they woke up in this world. Open eyes, who has them?
Black, and not even this can give me fondness for life, at this hour, after the dogs that only bark at me,
After the empty houses stocked with slumber of those of whom I don’t know their names.
Come on, they tell me. We’re going somewhere or have you not realized it? I don’t say. For what?
C'mon already, because by now, I feel what led the ancestors, which I did not meet.
Come, the time calls, and I do not know how much I have left. I just want to go while I still can.
So many great people at this hour, yet I am alone, I am less than what I thought I was when I awoke without a will.
Without a will, how could I have one on a cold and overcast September dawn?
With only Nothing waiting for me, but I know that then, I'll be grand, mute, but grand:
Those who didn’t listen, are dead and shall never live again. It's after two in the morning, and time isn’t waiting
For those who run on and don’t want to listen, or take time to listen, in a never-ending hurry towards the end.
Then follow them! May the cobblestone guide you to their stone-like rhythm all the way to the grave of angels that make family’s cry.
Poor thing, such a good person, and not one of them lived you, really.
The cellos call me from so far away, that I do not want to believe what I was,
But I was, and no one believes that beyond the truth, only known
much later in the world, life, through flesh that rips—and is so sweet,
That drips and sips with ease and pleasure that is felt through groans, so sincere, so helpless.
One can only be sincere when the hope of nothing takes you by the hand and leads you through the darkness.
Smiles that touch me, like flies on a hot morning that is long bygone,
After a sleepless night, beyond the two in the morning of my life:
Today I see that the sun won't be long dawning yet another day I did not ask for.
The streets of Savonlinna used to accompany me with the creaking of my weight over the snow,
The streets of the world groan with the weightlessness of my footsteps throughout time.
And everything is kitsch, and everything is life beyond good and evil. The art stays home, fast asleep.
Between two edges and what comes from above, with or without sea, with wind or smell
In the expectation of sex, be it stale words, or extreme meat, beyond impossible dreams that weigh.
Amsterdam calls me with dragging screams, with a will of ash and tulips that I've never seen,
When I don’t even want to know about the heathers that make my bones so rustic of this country.
I don’t care, not tonight, at two in the morning, when the sun has already begun to tell me I won't sleep yet another night.
When the Black Label calls out to me: Read another poem of José Agostinho Baptista.
No, not tonight. Enough of being away from myself, enough of not finding me within you,
Ever so far, you, neighbor of my heart, always faraway in the childish evenings.
Today, not even an attempt at Hunter S. Thompson, so far from reality
That one can only be found farther within, than thought possible.
Piles of granite cobblestone that speak to me directly for the dogs
That I am this, I am when people snore, and this isn’t human, this is but dreams:
Art is what you do when Black Label tells you that life is not so little, cannot be so little,
But it is, and slumber says: Hang tight, for the morning has already brought the flies, and you're still breathing.

24.09.2010

Torre de Dona Chama

Joao Bosco Silva, translated from portuguese by Sónia Oliveira