I wrote this poem of mixed memories and emotions a couple of days ago, in Portuguese, under what I can define as… my mixed mood of the moment; I’m pleased to say – and even more so to feel – that it had a therapeutic effect. The “weight” of “non-writing” turned into a very liberating writing… and now, as I post this translation, my mood is, in fact, very good! Thank you, all, for your amazing support through these times of… mixed emotions – and a special, passionately heartfelt thanks to Joseph*, my Love, for his understanding, his patience, and his extraordinary help.

Alexandra* xoxoxoxoxox  

Inherent Geographies

I

Today I have, of the sea, a vision of one who is far.
Non- writing weighs, more than on my shoulders, on
too much paper, much too damp, with the colour of
colours that are absent and salty. Yes; the colour of
clouds, would say those to whom the sky is as simple
as the sand, itself clean of colour, and, because
it’s winter, also of steps. Ironic, this parallel expansion
- I don’t know whether of life or of myself, while I wait
with no yesterday or tomorrow, sitting on top of the
dunes of now, by the side of words. They don’t come
to taste of anything, to me.

II

If there is a lighthouse, it is only in what I remember
within this lack of effort to remember. Just like those
cakes, in that box still made of tin, and still halfway
between the swing of the arm, the same colour of
much sun, and the legs of the same woman, still in
white, in the frock and in the sugar frosting. The cherry
would come, candied, in the echo of waves, to crest
upon the lips; as for the salt, oh, it was the very echo
of waves, cresting in the snot… when the freezing cold
of skin rolled and enfolded itself in the dry, hot sand!
(And what I have just done has been to enfold a cliché
in another cliché; is this inevitable, every time one
goes back?)

III

Whatever comes to me, here, comes full of raging silences.
Like one who screws and gets up, it doesn’t rain; but soaks. (1)

IV

And suddenly, I cast a laugh;
with the infallible aim of one
who spits against the wind.

-- © 2007 Alexandra* ~ OneLight*®

*

(1) – In this stanza, rather crude in tone, I have “played” with three Portuguese idiomatic expressions by inverting their meanings; the first one, our expression “one who comes with mild talks” (meaning, in English, “one who comes with a honeyed tongue”), turned into its opposite – “one who comes with raging silences”; the next two expressions, define, in Portuguese, someone who wavers, who is indecisive, who keeps you wondering – “one who neither screws nor gets up”, or “one who keeps you under a rain that doesn’t soak”. Once again, these two expressions turned into their very decisive, very much “in the face” opposite meanings. Such was, as I’ve shared with you in the introduction, the mood of that moment.