Mediterranean
Places don’t exist, never existed, not even the ancient ones.
What exists is what we see in them, the brick dust traces making them vanish.
Only thus we’ll land. Lightly, just for the remembrance.
Not in order to touch the lilac columns or go across on the tangerine sailing boat.
Only vaguely we progress. We don’t walk under the sun.
The nomads’ feet are not blackened by the sand and the sea in small ports.
The elms shelter us, not the terraces.
The dust traces bruise us with a faint drop
we can wile between our fingers and still it doesn’t solidify.
Nothing has changed since the first lament; the eyes
taking us along the Mediterranean horizon are our eyes,
and the olive trees its day-long boundary.
Translation from the Portuguese: Ana Hudson