translated by Ishmael Gomes
am I being patient
I dreamed
I couldn’t fly
children seem always about to cry
In Manarola
in that turquoise sea
I floated weightless
and forgot to breath
now I can see more
than what's there
I’m comfortable nowhere
not even asleep
All life is alive and here and continues sun
plucks fire from the deepest cold soul
sleepy with indecision everywhere is talk
in a tower of broken languages the
breeze and the seeds of every plant dying
to live there are only beginnings music
shifts the afternoon from the din of trams
and bicycle bells the peasant German
transparent English still conspires
conquest like a wounded admiral
anesthetized with a loyalty few could
feign anonymity plagues the ego as if
anything humans could create is important
leaves are born from branches shade is
shadows we’ve obstructed the light to
balance our potentials and failures so
easily embarrassed and given way to
police uniforms power confused by
morality’s detonation it’s better to sleep
than to wander for poetry drowned in
dreams there is only laughing and crying
true nature buried in the constant flux of
thought too near the surface of the skull it
escapes through the eyes and mouths of what
promise could perpetuate this species
which for the first time discovers the
ignorance it lives children who frighten
their parents into guilt of them being born
