In any given moment, in the beginning and in the end,
in the measure of a life time, downcast by full sorrow,
we remain without tomorrow or principle,
faded in age and distance, plundered by untruths,
only able to gather sand in some recreation ground,
drawing lines through the dust that bears our understanding,
pretending there’s some lucky charm against the impossible return.
There’s no truce, we can’t go back, and soundless
we shift away towards there where we call from afar
through the rarefied air, amongst the branches, the plane trees of yesterday,
figures compressed into shapeless white dirt,
in so many countless death similes.
Sensing decay, this intimate decline of all there is,
fully aware of incertitude as the exhibited sign of memory
which exposes each breath of time as its own hoax
and denies us the slightest parting from forsakenness
since we exist for nothing, we only wave, and we wave
if not only to admit that which we believe didn’t happen
except to understand the fair acceptance of our living.
English Translation from Portoguise by Ana Hudson